Sample records for pulse tone register

generation alternates between the left and right sound sources. Spontaneously calling crows can also generate similar pulse characteristics with only one sound generator. Airflow recordings in zebra finches and starlings show that pulsetone sounds can be generated unilaterally, synchronously...

) of about 200 ms near and at the threshold, whereas tau is about 100 ms at levels well above threshold. Discrepancies exist, nevertheless, between this single-time-constant model and the experimental data obtained for the pulses of shortest duration. To account for this, a model is proposed comprising...

The adult male Diana monkeys (Cercopithecus diana) produce predator-specific alarm calls in response to two of their predators, the crowned eagles and the leopards. The acoustic structure of these alarm calls is remarkable for a number of theoretical and empirical reasons. First, although pulsed phonation has been described in a variety of mammalian vocalizations, very little is known about the underlying production mechanism. Second, Diana monkey alarm calls are based almost exclusively on this vocal production mechanism to an extent that has never been documented in mammalian vocal behavior. Finally, the Diana monkeys' pulsed phonation strongly resembles the pulseregister in human speech, where fundamental frequency is mainly controlled by subglottal pressure. Here, we report the results of a detailed acoustic analysis to investigate the production mechanism of Diana monkey alarm calls. Within calls, we found a positive correlation between the fundamental frequency and the pulse amplitude, suggesting that both humans and monkeys control fundamental frequency by subglottal pressure. While in humans pulsed phonation is usually considered pathological or artificial, male Diana monkeys rely exclusively on pulsed phonation, suggesting a functional adaptation. Moreover, we were unable to document any nonlinear phenomena, despite the fact that they occur frequently in the vocal repertoire of humans and nonhumans, further suggesting that the very robust Diana monkey pulse production mechanism has evolved for a particular functional purpose. We discuss the implications of these findings for the structural evolution of Diana monkey alarm calls and suggest that the restricted variability in fundamental frequency and robustness of the source signal gave rise to the formant patterns observed in Diana monkey alarm calls, used to convey predator information.

Decoupling is an important tool to prolong the coherence time of quantum systems. Most decoupling schemes have been assuming selective controls on the system and it is believed that with global pulses one can only decouple systems with certain coupling terms like secular dipole-dipole coupling. In this article we show that with global pulses it is possible to reduce the coupling strength of other types of coupling, which we demonstrate with Ising coupling. The complexity of such pulses is ind...

Microstructural images may be tonepulse encoded and subsequently Fourier transformed to determine the two-dimensional density of frequency components. A theory is developed relating the density of frequency components to the density of length components. The density of length components corresponds directly to the actual grain-size distribution function from which the mean grain shape, size, and orientation can be obtained.

Microstructural images may be tonepulse encoded and subsequently Fourier transformed to determine the two-dimensional density of frequency components. A theory is developed relating the density of frequency components to the density of length components. The density of length components corresponds directly to the actual grain size distribution function from which the mean grain shape, size, and orientation can be obtained.

The principal physical mechanism of sound generation is similar in songbirds and humans, despite large differences in their vocal organs. Whereas vocal fold dynamics in the human larynx are well characterized, the vibratory behaviour of the sound-generating labia in the songbird vocal organ, the syrinx, is unknown. We present the first high-speed video records of the intact syrinx during induced phonation. The syrinx of anaesthetized crows shows a vibration pattern of the labia similar to tha...

Full Text Available Tone Reservation (TR is a technique proposed to combat the high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR problem of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM signals. However conventional TR suffers from high computational cost due to the difficulties in finding an effective cancellation signal in the time domain by using only a few tones in the frequency domain. It also suffers from a high cost of hardware implementation and long handling time delay issues due to the need to conduct multiple iterations to cancel multiple high signal peaks. In this paper, we propose an efficient approach, called two-threshold parallel scaling, for implementing a previously proposed Gaussian pulse-based Tone Reservation algorithm. Compared to conventional approaches, this technique significantly reduces the hardware implementation complexity and cost, while also reducing signal processing time delay by using just two iterations. Experimental results show that the proposed technique can effectively reduce the PAPR of OFDM signals with only a very small number of reserved tones and with limited usage of hardware resources. This technique is suitable for any OFDM-based communication systems, especially for Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB systems employing large IFFT/FFT transforms.

One promising option for transdermal delivery of protein- and nucleic acid-based pharmacologic agents involves the use of microneedles. However, microneedle-generated pores may allow microorganisms to penetrate the stratum corneum layer of the epidermis and cause local or systemic infection. In this study, microneedles with antimicrobial functionality were fabricated using two-photon polymerization-micromolding and pulsed laser deposition. The antibacterial activity of the silver-coated organically modified ceramic (Ormocer (registered) ) microneedles was demonstrated using an agar diffusion assay. Human epidermal keratinocyte viability on the Ormocer (registered) surfaces coated with silver was similar to that on uncoated Ormocer (registered) surfaces. This study indicates that coating microneedles with silver thin films using pulsed laser deposition is a useful and novel approach for creating microneedles with antimicrobial functionality. (communication)

Skin conductance (SCOR), finger pulse volume (FPV-OR), and EEG orienting responses were examined to repeated tones of either 60- or 90-dB intensity in chronic schizophrenics, nonschizophrenic psychiatric patients, and normals. SCOR reaffirmed previous findings with schizophrenics displaying significantly more frequent nonresponsiveness to 60-dB tones, and faster habituation among patients who did respond. Increased stimulus intensity decreased the incidence of nonresponsiveness to the level of controls, but did not alter the rapid habituation of schizophrenics. These results generalized fully to the FPV-OR, despite the independence demonstrated between SCOR and FPV-OR, but did not generalize to EEG response. There were no significant differences between schizophrenics and controls in EEG reactivity-only in background activity, particularly in a slowing of dominant alpha frequency in schizophrenics. Schizophrenics displayed the same degree of bilateral asymmetry as controls in both SCOR and EEG; there was no evidence of a specifically schizophrenic asymmetry. Schizophrenics nonresponsive in either SCOR or FPV-OR showed significantly greater Conceptual Disorganization and Emotional Withdrawal, and significantly less Excitement than responders in blind clinical ratings on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale. None of the findings could be attributed to the effect of neuroleptics. Comparisons between medicated and nonmedicated patients showed no drug-associated effect on any OR variable under study. Drug effects were apparent only in skin conductance level (SCL). Neuroleptics were associated with a significant reduction in SCL in both schizophrenics and nonschizophrenics, together with a flattening of an otherwise incrementing SCL among schizophrenics.

Introduction In teaching writing, people usually pay attention to grammatical problems from sentence structure to articles. They also pay attention to spelling, capitalisation, punctuation and the choice of words. These are essential-but so is the tone of the writing. In this article, I’d like to present some ideas about tone. Tone

This article examines how kindergarten-children are differentiated and segregated through vocal practices and processes. The analysis is based on empirical data, which originate from a long ethnographic fieldwork in Denmark. The author presents two different language tones: "a teaching tone...... and an exchange tone" and shows a pattern in the ways the two tones are performed. While the teaching tone is heard in the interaction between the staff and the ethnic minority children, the ethnic majority children (the Danes) are addressed in the exchange tone. Pierre Bourdieu's concepts: "linguistic market......", "habitual inclinations" and "feeling for the game" are used as theoretical framework. When the author interprets and explains the language pattern as unequal distribution of recognition and as continuation of reproduction of a socio-cultural hierarchy among the children she relates to this framework...

and an exchange tone" and shows a pattern in the ways the two tones are performed. While the teaching tone is heard in the interaction between the staff and the ethnic minority children, the ethnic majority children (the Danes) are addressed in the exchange tone. Pierre Bourdieu's concepts: "linguistic market......", "habitual inclinations" and "feeling for the game" are used as theoretical framework. When the author interprets and explains the language pattern as unequal distribution of recognition and as continuation of reproduction of a socio-cultural hierarchy among the children she relates to this framework...

Argues that contour tones in East Asian languages behave as melodic units consisting of a root node [upper] dominating a branching specification. It is also argued that, with upper as the tonal root node, no more than two rising or falling tones will contrast underlying. (49 references) (JL)

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to clarify the influence of high-intensity pulse irradiation with linear polarized near-infrared rays (HI-LPNR) and stretching on hypertonia in cerebrovascular disease patients. [Subjects and Methods] The subjects were 40 cerebrovascular disease patients with hypertonia of the ankle joint plantar flexor muscle. The subjects were randomly allocated to groups undergoing treatment with HI-LPNR irradiation (HI-LPNR group), stretching (stretching group), HI-LPNR irradiation followed by stretching (combination group), and control group (10 subjects each). In all groups, the passive range of motion of ankle dorsiflexion and passive resistive joint torque of ankle dorsiflexion were measured before and after the specified intervention. [Results] The changes in passive range of motion, significant increase in the stretching and combination groups compared with that in the control group. The changes in passive resistive joint torque, significant decrease in HI-LPNR, stretching, and combination groups compared with that in the control group. [Conclusion] HI-LPNR irradiation and stretching has effect of decrease muscle tone. However, combination of HI-LPNR irradiation and stretching has no multiplier effect.

Full Text Available The shift register is a type of sequential logic circuit which is mostly used for storing digital data or the transferring of data in the form of binary numbers in radio frequency identification (RFID applications to improve the security of the system. A power-efficient shift register utilizing a new flip-flop with an implicit pulse-triggered structure is presented in this article. The proposed flip-flop has features of high performance and low power. It is composed of a sampling circuit implemented by five transistors, a C-element for rise and fall paths, and a keeper stage. The speed is enhanced by executing four clocked transistors together with a transition condition technique. The simulation result confirms that the proposed topology consumes the lowest amounts of power of 30.1997 and 22.7071 nW for parallel in –parallel out (PIPO and serial in –serial out (SISO shift register respectively covering 22 µm2 chip area. The overall design consist of only 16 transistors and is simulated in 130 nm complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS technology with a 1.2 V power supply.

... resting for at least 10 minutes. Take the exercise heart rate while you are exercising. ... pulse rate can help determine if the person's heart is pumping. Pulse ... rate gives information about your fitness level and health.

Intense high frequency (25-38 kHz) tone bursts have been observed in acoustic tests of a scale model of a general aviation propeller. The amplitude of the tone burst is approximately equal to the amplitude of the propeller noise signature. The conditions necessary for the production of these tone bursts are described. The experiments indicate that the origin of these bursts is a periodic flow oscillation on the suction surface of the propeller blade tips which may be due to the interaction between an oscillating shock wave and a laminar boundary layer.

Online tone generators are free, user friendly, and can make for engaging and meaningful study of many topics in the areas of interference, waves, and the physics of music. By using a website such as OnlineToneGenerator.com, and through opening multiple windows simultaneously, students can immediately perform several experiments. In this article, I highlight five lesson ideas that come naturally from these types of websites.

In this paper I report on an investigation into the problem of assigning tones to pitch contours. The proposed model is intended to serve as a tool for phonologists working on instrumentally obtained pitch data from tone languages. Motivation and exemplification for the model is provided by data taken from my fieldwork on Bamileke Dschang (Cameroon). Following recent work by Liberman and others, I provide a parametrised F_0 prediction function P which generates F_0 values from a tone sequence, and I explore the asymptotic behaviour of downstep. Next, I observe that transcribing a sequence X of pitch (i.e. F_0) values amounts to finding a tone sequence T such that P(T) {}~= X. This is a combinatorial optimisation problem, for which two non-deterministic search techniques are provided: a genetic algorithm and a simulated annealing algorithm. Finally, two implementations---one for each technique---are described and then compared using both artificial and real data for sequences of up to 20 tones. These programs ...

The research focuses on a pure-tone audiometer designing. The relevance of the study is proved by high incidence of an auditory analyser in older people and children. At first, the article provides information about subjective and objective audiometry methods. Secondly, we offer block-diagram and basic-circuit arrangement of device. We decided to base on STM32F407VG microcontroller and use digital pot in the function of attenuator. Third, we implemented microcontroller and PC connection. C programming language is used for microcontroller’s program and PC’s interface. Fourthly, we created the pure-tone audiometer prototype. In the future, we will implement the objective method ASSR in addition to pure-tone audiometry.

Chicahuaxtla Triqui (Otomanguean, Mexico) is one of the rare tone languages with five contrastive level tones and its underlying tone system is even more complicated than its surface five-level tone system. The complexity of its underlying tone system has developed through the historical tone shifts from Proto-Triqui. The surface tone system of…

Chicahuaxtla Triqui (Otomanguean, Mexico) is one of the rare tone languages with five contrastive level tones and its underlying tone system is even more complicated than its surface five-level tone system. The complexity of its underlying tone system has developed through the historical tone shifts from Proto-Triqui. The surface tone system of…

Full Text Available It has been observed that tonal phenomena occur in quite a few Indo-Aryan languages in the northwestern corner of the South-Asian subcontinent. This paper presents a study of the tone system of one of these languages, Kalam Kohistani. After establishing that Kalam Kohistani has five contrastive surface tones—a high tone, a low tone, a rising tone, and two types of falling tone—I propose an analysis of these tones in terms of Autosegmental Phonology. Furthermore, some observations are made on the relation between aspiration and tone, and on the functional load of tone in Kalam Kohistani. Its relatively rich inventory of tones makes Kalam Kohistani, along with two of its close neighbors, stand out as unique among the Indo-Aryan languages.

and pulsating ‘room’. Hence, the visitors in Pulse Room are invited into a complex scenario that continuously oscillates between various aspects of signification (the light bulbs representing individual lives; the pulse itself as the symbolic ‘rhythm of life’) and instants of pure material processuality......“Pulse on Pulse” investigates the relation between signifying processes and non-signifying material dynamism in the installation Pulse Room (2006-) by Mexican Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. In Pulse Room the sense of pulse is ambiguous. Biorhythms are transmitted from the pulsing energy...... of the visitor’s beating heart to the blink of a fragile light bulb, thereby transforming each light bulb into a register of individual life. But at the same time the blinking light bulbs together produce a chaotically flickering light environment composed by various layers of repetitive rhythms, a vibrant...

The President of the Staff Association set the tone by leaving the members of the SCC speechless when he read out a solemn declaration For a start, Management invites us to discuss the Five-Yearly Review without having provided any formal text. Concertation Method of analysis and use of data previously adopted by Council. Salaries. Increase. Employment conditions. Family allowances. Crèche. Career perspectives. Referendum.

Study on the whispered tone is important to speech recognition and conversion in whispered Chinese. In this paper, the characteristics of whispered speech are introduced and the tone features in whispered Chinese are discussed. There is no fundamental frequency in the whispered speech, so other features, such as the amplitude envelope, duration, glottal area, lip area, forrnant, and vocal tract length, are extracted and their contributions to the automatic tone recognition are compared. From the experiments with six simple Chinese whispered vowels in four tones, it is proved that loudness-weighted 32 Mel-frequency bands log-amplitude envelopes and duration can be used as the main tone features in the whispered Chinese tone recognition. The average tone recognition rate approaches that of the human perception level.

Speech units are reported to be hyperarticulated in both infant-directed speech (IDS) and Lombard speech. Since these two registers have typically been studied separately, it is unclear if the same speech units are hyperarticulated in the same manner between these registers. The aim of the present study is to compare the effect of register on vowel and tone modification in the tonal language Mandarin Chinese. Vowel and tone productions were produced by 15 Mandarin-speaking mothers during interactions with their 12-month-old infants during a play session (IDS), in conversation with a Mandarin-speaking adult in a 70 dBA eight-talker babble noise environment (Lombard speech), and in a quiet environment (adult-directed speech). Vowel space expansion was observed in IDS and Lombard speech, however, the patterns of vowel-shift were different between the two registers. IDS displayed tone space expansion only in the utterance-final position, whereas there was no tone space expansion in Lombard speech. The overall pitch increased for all tones in both registers. The tone-bearing vowel duration also increased in both registers, but only in utterance-final position. The difference in speech modifications between these two registers is discussed in light of speakers' different communicative needs.

The selectivity of neurons in sensory cortex can be modified by pairing neuromodulator release with sensory stimulation. Repeated pairing of electrical stimulation of the cholinergic nucleus basalis, for example, induces input specific plasticity in primary auditory cortex (A1). Pairing nucleus basalis stimulation (NBS) with a tone increases the number of A1 neurons that respond to the paired tone frequency. Pairing NBS with fast or slow tone trains can respectively increase or decrease the ability of A1 neurons to respond to rapidly presented tones. Pairing vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) with a single tone alters spectral tuning in the same way as NBS-tone pairing without the need for brain surgery. In this study, we tested whether pairing VNS with tone trains can change the temporal response properties of A1 neurons. In naïve rats, A1 neurons respond strongly to tones repeated at rates up to 10 pulses per second (pps). Repeatedly pairing VNS with 15 pps tone trains increased the temporal following capacity of A1 neurons and repeatedly pairing VNS with 5 pps tone trains decreased the temporal following capacity of A1 neurons. Pairing VNS with tone trains did not alter the frequency selectivity or tonotopic organization of auditory cortex neurons. Since VNS is well tolerated by patients, VNS-tone train pairing represents a viable method to direct temporal plasticity in a variety of human conditions associated with temporal processing deficits.

In recent decades, family patterns have changed significantly. National laws have taken these changes into account, recognizing new forms of unions, different to heterosexual marriage. Indeed, recently some countries have given the possibility to same-sex couples to enter into various forms of unions. Staff regulations of international organizations are not directly affected by national laws, but in the context of diversity policies, the lack of recognition of these new forms of unions, may appear to discriminate based on sexual orientation and to limit the freedom of choosing marital status. A study by the International Service for Remunerations and Pensions (iSRP) of the OECD in January 2015 (PROS Report (1015) 04) shows that in comparison with other international organizations, CERN offers the least favorable social conditions for its Staff with in a registered partnership. As part of the Five-year review in 2015, it is important that CERN aligns itself with the practice of these other organizations...

This paper outlines a method of auditory and acoustic analysis for determining the tonemes of a language starting from scratch, drawing on the author's experience of recording and analyzing tone languages of north-east India. The methodology is applied to a preliminary analysis of tone in the Thang dialect of Khiamniungan, a virtually undocumented…

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is the latest trend in television technology and we expect an in ux of HDR capable consumer TVs in the market. Initial HDR consumer displays will operate on a peak brightness of about 500-1000 nits while in the coming years display peak brightness is expected to go beyond 1000 nits. However, professionally graded HDR content can range from 1000 to 4000 nits. As with Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) content, we can expect HDR content to be available in variety of lighting styles such as low key, medium key and high key video. This raises concerns over tone-compatibility between HDR displays especially when adapting to various lighting styles. It is expected that dynamic range adaptation between HDR displays uses similar techniques as found with tone mapping and tone expansion operators. In this paper, we survey simple tone mapping methods of 4000 nits color-graded HDR content for 1000 nits HDR displays. We also investigate tone expansion strategies when HDR content graded in 1000 nits is displayed on 4000 nits HDR monitors. We conclude that the best tone reproduction technique between HDR displays strongly depends on the lighting style of the content.

Accepted in Enrique L. Palancar & Jean-Léo Léonard (eds.), Tone and Inflection: New facts under new perspectives. Submitted to DeGruyter, Oct. 2014; Tone is about melody and meaning, inflection is about grammar and this book is about a bit of both. The different papers in this book study possible and sometimes very complex ways in which the melodies of a given language engage in the expression of grammatical meaning. In this light, the volume aims to broaden our understanding of the role of t...

Full Text Available Tone reservation peak-to-average (PAR ratio reduction is an established area when it comes to bringing down signal peaks in multicarrier (DMT or OFDM systems. When designing such a system, some questions often arise about PAR reduction. Is it worth the effort? How much can it give? How much does it give depending on the parameter choices? With this paper, we attempt to answer these questions without resolving to extensive simulations for every system and every parameter choice. From a specification of the allowed spectrum, for instance prescribed by a standard, including a PSD-mask and a number of tones, we analytically predict achievable PAR levels, and thus implicitly suggest parameter choices. We use the ADSL2 and ADSL2+ systems as design examples.

Research has shown that lexical tones, a suprasegmental feature, are processed by native speakers as linguistic elements just like other segmental information. Among the four tones of Mandarin Chinese, in particular, Tone 2 and Tone 3 are very similar in their pitch contour shapes and thus can be difficult to distinguish in native and nonnative…

This article examines how key components of holistic tone production can help flutists form a resonant tone. This is framed in an exploration of tone pedagogy and includes a model of tone evaluation and education. This research is also applicable to other instrumentalists, especially wind players. In this case study information was collected by…

Iowa State University GIS Support and Research Facility — The National Register Historic District layer is a shape file showing the boundaries of Historic Districts that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

negative inertances whose values depend on the tone hole proportions. An open hole at a pressure node can radiate as a dipole when (b/a) is large and (t/2b) is small. Dissipative losses vary significantly with the frequency of oscillation and the tone hole geometry. Lowering the pad height above a tone hole increases the dissipation. Acoustical streaming through holes is very important for t << 2b, and the associated nonlinear dissipation can destroy the oscillation on poorly designed woodwinds. This unexpected phenomenon is critical in the playing behavior of some flutes, clarinets, and other woodwinds. The onset of streaming occurs at all dynamical levels and more easily for instruments whose spectra are in a 1:3:5 frequency ratio, rather than a 1:2:3 ratio. The streaming is most important for low registertones for which the usual dissipation is also the largest relative to the radiative dissipation, due to losses at the sharp edges inside the bore near the tone holes. Mutual interactions between holes separated by a distance 2s are most pronounced for large diameter holes (2b/2s not small). Holes interact externally via radiation, and internally via higher-order evanescent modes excited at the intersection of the main bore with each tone hole. The non-radiative dissipation increases, and the air column resonances are slightly shifted due to the presence of these interactions. Applications are discussed and numerous additional experiments are proposed which are relevant to woodwinds and their design, and the perception of listeners in rooms.

BACKGROUND: Population based twin registers represent a valuable tool for genetic epidemiological research, since twin studies aim at separating the effect of genes and environment for complex traits. The Danish Twin Register's history, size, ascertainment and completeness of data, as well as data...... accessibility and availability are described. RESULTS: The Danish Twin Register comprises 14,051 twin pairs born 1870-1930, representing all twins surviving to age six years, and 20,888 twin pairs born 1953-1982, representing 75% of those born 1953-1967 and 95% of those born 1968-1982. The birth cohorts 1931......-1952 og 1983-1993 are being ascertained at the moment. The register is available for research given certain conditions are fulfilled. CONCLUSION: This register will in a few years be the most comprehensive twin register in the world. It is a very valuable Danish research resource....

BACKGROUND: Population based twin registers represent a valuable tool for genetic epidemiological research, since twin studies aim at separating the effect of genes and environment for complex traits. The Danish Twin Register's history, size, ascertainment and completeness of data, as well as data...... accessibility and availability are described. RESULTS: The Danish Twin Register comprises 14,051 twin pairs born 1870-1930, representing all twins surviving to age six years, and 20,888 twin pairs born 1953-1982, representing 75% of those born 1953-1967 and 95% of those born 1968-1982. The birth cohorts 1931......-1952 og 1983-1993 are being ascertained at the moment. The register is available for research given certain conditions are fulfilled. CONCLUSION: This register will in a few years be the most comprehensive twin register in the world. It is a very valuable Danish research resource....

Full Text Available Scientific background: The annual number of joint replacement operations in Germany is high. The introduction of an arthroplasty register promises an important contribution to the improvement of the quality of patient’s care. Research questions: The presented report addresses the questions on organization and functioning, benefits and cost-benefits as well as on legal, ethical and social aspects of the arthroplasty registers. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted in September 2008 in the medical databases MEDLINE, EMBASE etc. and was complemented with a hand search. Documents describing arthroplasty registers and/or their relevance as well as papers on legal, ethical and social aspects of such registers were included in the evaluation. The most important information was extracted and analysed. Results: Data concerning 30 arthroplasty registers in 19 countries as well as one international arthroplasty register were identified. Most of the arthroplasty registers are maintained by national orthopedic societies, others by health authorities or by their cooperation. Mostly, registries are financially supported by governments and rarely by other sources.The participation of the orthopedists in the data collection process of the arthroplasty registry is voluntary in most countries. The consent of the patients is usually required. The unique patient identification is ensured in nearly all registers.Each data set consists of patient and clinic identification numbers, data on diagnosis, the performed intervention, the operation date and implanted prostheses. The use of clinical scores, patient-reported questionnaires and radiological documentation is rare. Methods for data documentation and transfer are paper form, electronic entry as well as scanning of the data using bar codes. The data are mostly being checked for their completeness and validity. Most registers offer results of the data evaluation to the treating orthopedists and

Ohio State Univ., Columbus. Center on Education and Training for Employment.

This document, which is designed for use in developing a tech prep competency profile for the occupation of registered nurse (with an associate degree), lists technical competencies and competency builders for 19 units pertinent to the health technologies cluster in general and 5 units specific to the occupation of registered nurse. The following…

The Danish Adoption Register was established in 1963-1964 to explore the genetic and environmental contribution to familial aggregation of schizophrenia.......The Danish Adoption Register was established in 1963-1964 to explore the genetic and environmental contribution to familial aggregation of schizophrenia....

The National Board of Health, Denmark in 1997 published guidelines for reporting of pathology data and the Danish Pathology Register (DPR) was established.......The National Board of Health, Denmark in 1997 published guidelines for reporting of pathology data and the Danish Pathology Register (DPR) was established....

This dissertation studies the perception of tones in Thai, and aims to contribute to a formal characterization of speech perception more generally. Earlier work had argued that perception of tones involves retrieval of some abstract "autosegmental" representation provided by the phonology, while another line of work had argued for the…

This dissertation studies the perception of tones in Thai, and aims to contribute to a formal characterization of speech perception more generally. Earlier work had argued that perception of tones involves retrieval of some abstract "autosegmental" representation provided by the phonology, while another line of work had argued for the…

Cantonese is a tone language, in which the variation of the fundamental frequency contour of a syllable can change meaning. There are six different lexical tones in Cantonese. While research with Western languages has shown an association between stuttering and syllabic stress, nothing is known about whether stuttering in Cantonese speakers is associated with one or more of the six lexical tones. Such an association has been reported in conversational speech in Mandarin, which is also a tone language, but which varies markedly from Cantonese. Twenty-four native Cantonese-speaking adults who stutter participated in this study, ranging in age from 18-33 years. There were 18 men and 6 women. Participants read aloud 13 Cantonese syllables, each of which was produced with six contrastive lexical tones. All 78 syllables were embedded in the same carrier sentence, to reduce the influence of suprasegmental or linguistic stress, and were presented in random order. No significant differences were found for stuttering moments across the six lexical tones. It is suggested that this is because lexical tones, at least in Cantonese, do not place the task demands on the speech motor system that typify varying syllabic stress in Western languages: variations not only in fundamental frequency, but also in duration and intensity. The findings of this study suggest that treatments for adults who stutter in Western languages, such as speech restructuring, can be used with Cantonese speakers without undue attention to lexical tone.

An experimental method is taken to research tonal elements' pitch on modern Chinese mono-syllable tone in this paper,obtaining register feature and arch feature of the tonal element. There are some experimental results. Standard Chinese tones contain three tonal elements,i.e.,high register tonal element H,middle register tonal element M, and low register tonal element L. Standard Chinese tones are represented with tonal elements as followsTone one HHH,Tone two MHH,Tone three LLM,Tone four HML. The tonal element has arch,and every tonal element is flat arch. Tonal arch grundmodus are made up of flat arch.%通过实验方法研究普通话单字调调素的音高,得出调素的音区特征和曲拱特征。实验发现：普通话声调包含三个调素,分别是高音区调素 H、中音区调素 M 和低音区调素 L,普通话四个声调用调素表示为阴平 HHH、阳平 MHH、上声 LLH、去声 HML。调素有曲拱,每个调素都是平拱,各声调的曲拱样态由平拱组合而成。

An acoustical and perceptual study of lexical tone was conducted to evaluate the extent and nature of tonal disruption in aphasia. The language under investigation was Thai, a tone language which has five lexical tones--mid, low, falling, high, and rising. Subjects included six left brain-damaged aphasics (two Broca's, one transcortical motor, one global, one conduction, one Wernicke), one right brain-damaged nonaphasic, one cerebellar dysarthric, and five normals. High-quality tape recordings of each subject's productions of a minimal set of five, monosyllabic Thai words were presented to 10 adult Thai listeners for identification. Results from the phonemic identification tests indicated that tone production is relatively spared in aphasic patients with unilateral left hemisphere lesions. The performance of the global aphasic, however, was considerably below normal. Patterns of tonal confusions further revealed that the performance of all aphasics, except the global, differed from that of normal speakers primarily in degree rather than in kind. Tonal contrasts were signaled at a high level of proficiency by the right brain-damaged and dysarthric patients. Acoustical analysis revealed that F0 contours associated with the five tones for all aphasics, except the global, were similar in overall shape as well as position in the tone space to those of normals. F0 contours for the right brain-damaged patient and the dysarthric also generally agreed with those of normals in terms of shape and position. F0 ranges of both aphasic and nonaphasic brain-damaged speakers were generally larger than those of normals for all five tones. The relationship between tone and vowel duration was generally similar to that of normals for all brain-damaged speakers. A comparison of aphasics' performance on tone perception (J. Gandour & R. Dardarananda, 1983, Brain and Language, 18, 94-114) and tone production indicated that, for the normal and right brain-damaged subjects, performance on

... a diploma from an approved nursing program. Registered nurses also must be licensed. Education In all nursing education programs, students take courses in anatomy, physiology, microbiology, chemistry, nutrition, psychology, and other social and ...

The theoretical part of the thesis analyzes several selected methodologies and best-practices related to information technology risks management, with focus on documents and guidance developed by ISACA. It builds a set of ideas and basic requirements for effective model of an IT risk register. Strong emphasis is placed on mapping CobiT 4.1 based Risk IT to COBIT 5. The practical part describes implementation of an exploratory web-based IT risk register in Python programming language utilizing...

Four experiments are reported that examine subjects' ability to form and use images of tones and chords. In Experiments 1 and 3, subjects heard a cue tone or chord and formed an image of a tone or chord one whole step in pitch above the cue. This image was then compared to a probe tone or chord that was either the same as the image in pitch, different from the image in pitch and harmonically closely related, or different and harmonically distantly related. Image formation times and response times were measured. In Experiment 3 a random-tone mask was used to control for possible contribution of the cue in echoic memory. In both experiments tone images were formed faster than chord images, a result consistent with the idea of structural complexity as a determinant of image formation time. Response times and accuracy rates were found to parallel results found in music perception studies, results consistent with the idea of shared mechanisms in the processing of musical images and percepts. Experiments 2 and 4 were control experiments examining the possible influence of demand characteristics and subjects' knowledge. In experiment 2 subjects predicted the results of "an average person" using imagery, and in Experiment 4 subjects completed the task without receiving imagery instructions. The findings ruled out the possibility that demand characteristics and subjects' knowledge were solely responsible for the results of Experiments 1 and 3 and support the argument for the role of imagery.

Cortical auditory evoked potentials, including mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a to pure tones, harmonic complexes, and speech syllables, were examined across groups of trained musicians and nonmusicians. Because of the extensive formal and informal auditory training received by musicians throughout their lifespan, it was predicted that these electrophysiological indicators of preattentive pitch discrimination and involuntary attention change would distinguish musicians from nonmusicians and provide insight regarding the influence of auditory training and experience on central auditory function. A total of 102 (67 trained musicians, 35 nonmusicians) right-handed young women with normal hearing participated in three auditory stimulus conditions: pure tones (25 musicians/15 nonmusicians), harmonic tones (42 musicians/20 nonmusicians), and speech syllables (26 musicians/15 nonmusicians). Pure tone and harmonic tone stimuli were presented in multideviant oddball paradigms designed to elicit MMN and P3a. Each paradigm included one standard and two infrequently occurring deviants. For the pure tone condition, the standard pure tone was 1000 Hz, and the two deviant tones differed in frequency from the standard by either 1.5% (1015 Hz) or 6% (1060 Hz). The harmonic tone complexes were digitally created and contained a fundamental frequency (F0) and three harmonics. The amplitude of each harmonic was divided by its harmonic number to create a natural amplitude contour in the frequency spectrum. The standard tone was G4 (F0 = 392 Hz), and the two deviant tones differed in fundamental frequency from the standard by 1.5% (F0 = 386 Hz) or 6% (F0 = 370 Hz). The fundamental frequencies of the harmonic tones occur within the average female vocal range. The third condition to elicit MMN and P3a was designed for the presentation of speech syllables (/ba/ and /da/) and was structured as a traditional oddball paradigm (one standard/one infrequent deviant). Each speech stimulus was

Processor register protection management is disclosed. In embodiments, a method of processor register protection management can include determining a sensitive logical register for executable code generated by a compiler, generating an error-correction table identifying the sensitive logical register, and storing the error-correction table in a memory accessible by a processor. The processor can be configured to generate a duplicate register of the sensitive logical register identified by the error-correction table.

Register file soft error recovery including a system that includes a first register file and a second register file that mirrors the first register file. The system also includes an arithmetic pipeline for receiving data read from the first register file, and error detection circuitry to detect whether the data read from the first register file includes corrupted data. The system further includes error recovery circuitry to insert an error recovery instruction into the arithmetic pipeline in response to detecting the corrupted data. The inserted error recovery instruction replaces the corrupted data in the first register file with a copy of the data from the second register file.

Investigating a tone language involves careful transcription of tone on words and phrases. This is challenging when the phonological categories--the tones or melodies--have not been identified. Effects such as coarticulation, sandhi, and phrase-level prosody appear as obstacles to early elicitation and classification of tone. This article presents…

Collection of systematic information on education is a long established practice in Denmark. Since 1910, the Danish Ministry of Education’s annual reports collects information about individual-level test scores in e.g. compulsory schooling. Today, several registers from compulsory schooling to ad...... of missing information on immigrants, the level is still low in an international context....

The Register for Suicide Attempts (RSA) is a product of the WHO research project "WHO/Euro Multicentre Study on Parasuicide", which, among other things, had the purpose of collecting data on suicide attempts from 13 European countries. Data is collected in order to calculate trends and identify...

Organizational procedures and appropriate forms for high school students to conduct a community survey of non-registered voters are provided. Duties for student coordinator, field staff, and clerical staff are described and a flow chart depicts the relationship of personnel to one another and to the community. Students are instructed to notify…

Introduction: The Danish Heart Register (DHR) is a clinical database of invasive procedures within cardiology. Content: All providers of these procedures have been obliged to report to DHR since 2000. DHR is used to monitor the activity and quality of the procedures and serves as a data source...

The Register for Suicide Attempts (RSA) is a product of the WHO research project "WHO/Euro Multicentre Study on Parasuicide", which, among other things, had the purpose of collecting data on suicide attempts from 13 European countries. Data is collected in order to calculate trends and identify...

Organizational procedures and appropriate forms for high school students to conduct a community survey of non-registered voters are provided. Duties for student coordinator, field staff, and clerical staff are described and a flow chart depicts the relationship of personnel to one another and to the community. Students are instructed to notify…

Tempe, Arizona 95281 TASK Pilots at various levels of experience will fly simulated hostile threat missions in the A-10 or F-16 versions of the ASPT ...value of the tones. DEPENDENT VARIABLES ASPT computes several indices of mission performance. The primary thrust of the present research is to relate...physiological indices of mental workload to ASPT performance variables. The physiological variables of greatest initial interest are heart rate, pulse

This paper focuses on the particular kinds of difficulties which arise in the study of an emergent tone-system, exemplified by Tamang in Nepal, where pitch, phonation and other laryngeal features combine in the definition of a tone. As a consequence, conducting a well-ordered analysis in stages first of phonetic transcription, then variation in…

This article examines the perception of tones by non-tone-language-learning (non-tonelearning) infants between 5 and 18 months in a study that reveals infants’ initial sensitivity to tonal contrasts, deterioration yet plasticity of tonal sensitivity at the end of the first year, and a perceptual reb

Tone mapping operators compress high dynamic range images to improve the picture quality on a digital display when the dynamic range of the display is lower than that of the image. However, tone mapping operators have been largely designed and evaluated based on the aesthetic quality of the resulting displayed image or how perceptually similar the compressed image appears relative to the original scene. They also often require per image tuning of parameters depending on the content of the image. In military operations, however, the amount of information that can be perceived is more important than the aesthetic quality of the image and any parameter adjustment needs to be as automated as possible regardless of the content of the image. We have conducted two studies to evaluate the perceivable detail of a set of tone mapping algorithms, and we apply our findings to develop and test an automated tone mapping algorithm that demonstrates a consistent improvement in the amount of perceived detail. An automated, and thereby predictable, tone mapping method enables a consistent presentation of perceivable features, can reduce the bandwidth required to transmit the imagery, and can improve the accessibility of the data by reducing the needed expertise of the analyst(s) viewing the imagery.

The Navier Stokes equation is solved computationally by the Dispersion-Relation-Preserving (DRP) scheme for the flow and acoustic fields associated with a laminar boundary layer flow over an automobile door cavity. In this work, the flow Reynolds number is restricted to R(sub delta*) < 3400; the range of Reynolds number for which laminar flow may be maintained. This investigation focuses on two aspects of the problem, namely, the effect of boundary layer thickness on the cavity tone frequency and intensity and the effect of the size of the computation domain on the accuracy of the numerical simulation. It is found that the tone frequency decreases with an increase in boundary layer thickness. When the boundary layer is thicker than a certain critical value, depending on the flow speed, no tone is emitted by the cavity. Computationally, solutions of aeroacoustics problems are known to be sensitive to the size of the computation domain. Numerical experiments indicate that the use of a small domain could result in normal mode type acoustic oscillations in the entire computation domain leading to an increase in tone frequency and intensity. When the computation domain is expanded so that the boundaries are at least one wavelength away from the noise source, the computed tone frequency and intensity are found to be computation domain size independent.

The tolerance of the non-local effect in the BOTDA method using a dual-tone probe wave with fixed frequency separation is theoretically and experimentally investigated in this paper. The presented analysis points out that when the sensing fiber consists of two long fiber segments with large BFS difference (> 100 MHz), there will always be only one probe tone interacting with the pump pulse in the front fiber segment. Therefore, although the pulse distortion problem can still be overcome in this case, the conventional non-local effect would impose systematic error on the estimated BFS of the hotspot located at the end of the front fiber segment. For the purpose of avoiding the impact of non-local effect and eliminating the pump distortion problem simultaneously when using high probe power, a novel method based on a four-tone probe wave is proposed, in which the probe light consists of two pairs of orthogonally-polarized dual-tone probe waves with opposite frequency scanning direction. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is capable of realizing 2 m spatial resolution over 104-km-long sensing fiber without the impact of non-local effect.

Models of phonological development assume that speech perception precedes speech production and that children acquire suprasegmental features earlier than segmental features. Studies of Chinese-speaking children challenge these assumptions. For example, Chinese-speaking children can produce tones before two-and-a-half years but are not able to discriminate the same tones until after 6 years of age. This study compared the perception and production of monosyllabic Cantonese tones directly in 3 -year-old children. Twenty children and their mothers identified Cantonese tones in a picture identification test and produced monosyllabic tones in a picture labeling task. To control for lexical biases on tone ratings, the mother- and child-productions were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information and were presented to five judges for tone classification. Detailed acoustic analysis was performed. Contrary to the view that children master lexical tones earlier than segmental phonemes, results showed that 3-year-old children could not perceive or produce any Cantonese tone with adult-like proficiency and incorrect tone productions were acoustically different from criterion. In contrast to previous findings that Cantonese-speaking children mastered tone production before tone perception, we observed more accuracy during speech perception than production. Findings from Cantonese-speaking children challenge some of the established tenets in theories of phonological development that have been tested mostly with native English speakers.

Collection of systematic information on education is a long established practice in Denmark. Since 1910, the Danish Ministry of Education’s annual reports collects information about individual-level test scores in e.g. compulsory schooling. Today, several registers from compulsory schooling...... to adults continuing education and training stem from administrative education reports. Therefore, for cohorts born 1945-1990, 97 percent of the Danish population has a valid education identifier. For the immigrant population born in the same cohorts the coverage is 85-90 percent. Despite a higher level...

Collection of systematic information on education is a long established practice in Denmark. Since 1910, the Danish Ministry of Education's annual reports collects information about individual-level test scores in e.g. compulsory schooling. Today, several registers from compulsory schooling...... to adults continuing education and training stem from administrative education reports. Therefore, for cohorts born 1945-1990, 97 percent of the Danish population has a valid education identifier. For the immigrant population born in the same cohorts the coverage is 85-90 percent. Despite a higher level...

to adults continuing education and training stem from administrative education reports. Therefore, for cohorts born 1945-1990, 97 percent of the Danish population has a valid education identifier. For the immigrant population born in the same cohorts the coverage is 85-90 percent. Despite a higher level......Collection of systematic information on education is a long established practice in Denmark. Since 1910, the Danish Ministry of Education’s annual reports collects information about individual-level test scores in e.g. compulsory schooling. Today, several registers from compulsory schooling...

Frommer , 1979; Zwislocki, 1980; Lighthill, 1981; Khanna, 1983). The problem is made more difficult by the current state of the experimental evidence...pathology of high-tone deafness," Bull. Johns Hopkins Hosp. 54, 315-379 Frommer , G.H. (1979). "Fluid motion in the mammalian organ of Corti: a

As new technologies like High Dynamic Range cameras, AMOLED and high resolution displays emerge on consumer electronics market, it becomes very important to deliver the best picture quality for mobile devices. Tone Mapping (TM) is a popular technique to enhance visual quality. However, the traditional implementation of Tone Mapping procedure is limited by pixel's value to value mapping, and the performance is restricted in terms of local sharpness and colorfulness. To overcome the drawbacks of traditional TM, we propose a spatial-frequency based framework in this paper. In the proposed solution, intensity component of an input video/image signal is split on low pass filtered (LPF) and high pass filtered (HPF) bands. Tone Mapping (TM) function is applied to LPF band to improve the global contrast/brightness, and HPF band is added back afterwards to keep the local contrast. The HPF band may be adjusted by a coring function to avoid noise boosting and signal overshooting. Colorfulness of an original image may be preserved or enhanced by chroma components correction by means of saturation function. Localized content adaptation is further improved by dividing an image to a set of non-overlapped regions and modifying each region individually. The suggested framework allows users to implement a wide range of tone mapping applications with perceptional local sharpness and colorfulness preserved or enhanced. Corresponding hardware circuit may be integrated in camera, video or display pipeline with minimal hardware budget

Cherokee, the sole member of the southern branch of Iroquoian languages, is a severely endangered language. Unlike other members of the Iroquoian family, Cherokee has lexical tone. Community members are concerned about the potential loss of their language, and both speakers and teachers comment on the difficulty that language learners have with…

An autosegmental account of the child's acquisition of grammatical tone in Sesotho, a southern Bantu language, is presented. The following theoretical questions are addressed: (1) When and how does the child figure out that Sesotho is a tonal rather than intonational, stress, or accentual language?; (2) How does the child acquire tonal rules?; and…

Whilst most of us have an innate feeling for tone of voice, it is an elusive quality that even phoneticians struggle to describe with sufficient subtlety. For people who cannot speak themselves this can have particularly profound repercussions. Augmentative communication often involves text-to-speech, a technology that only supports a basic choice of prosody based on punctuation. Given how inherently difficult it is to talk about more nuanced tone of voice, there is a risk that its absence from current devices goes unremarked and unchallenged. Looking ahead optimistically to more expressive communication aids, their design will need to involve more subtle interactions with tone of voice-interactions that the people using them can understand and engage with. Interaction design can play a role in making tone of voice visible, tangible, and accessible. Two projects that have already catalysed interdisciplinary debate in this area, Six Speaking Chairs and Speech Hedge, are introduced together with responses. A broader role for design is advocated, as a means to opening up speech technology research to a wider range of disciplinary perspectives, and also to the contributions and influence of people who use it in their everyday lives.

“Pulse on Pulse” investigates the relation between signifying processes and non-signifying material dynamism in the installation Pulse Room (2006-) by Mexican Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. In Pulse Room the sense of pulse is ambiguous. Biorhythms are transmitted from the pulsing energy...... and pulsating ‘room’. Hence, the visitors in Pulse Room are invited into a complex scenario that continuously oscillates between various aspects of signification (the light bulbs representing individual lives; the pulse itself as the symbolic ‘rhythm of life’) and instants of pure material processuality...... a multilayered sense of time and space that is central to the sensory experience of Pulse Room as a whole. Pulse Room is, at the very same time, an anthropomorfized archive of a past intimacy and an all-encompassing immersive environment modulating continuously in real space-time....

In studies of pitch processing, a fundamental question is whether shared neural mechanisms at higher cortical levels are engaged for pitch perception of linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory stimuli. Positron emission tomography (PET) was used in a crosslinguistic study to compare pitch processing in native speakers of two tone languages (that is, languages in which variations in pitch patterns are used to distinguish lexical meaning), Chinese and Thai, with those of English, a nontone language. Five subjects from each language group were scanned under three active tasks (tone, pitch, and consonant) that required focused-attention, speeded-response, auditory discrimination judgments, and one passive baseline as silence. Subjects were instructed to judge pitch patterns of Thai lexical tones in the tone condition; pitch patterns of nonspeech stimuli in the pitch condition; syllable-initial consonants in the consonant condition. Analysis was carried out by paired-image subtraction. When comparing the tone to the pitch task, only the Thai group showed significant activation in the left frontal operculum. Activation of the left frontal operculum in the Thai group suggests that phonological processing of suprasegmental as well as segmental units occurs in the vicinity of Broca's area. Baseline subtractions showed significant activation in the anterior insular region for the English and Chinese groups, but not Thai, providing further support for the existence of possibly two parallel, separate pathways projecting from the temporo-parietal to the frontal language area. More generally, these differential patterns of brain activation across language groups and tasks support the view that pitch patterns are processed at higher cortical levels in a top-down manner according to their linguistic function in a particular language.

The purpose of this study is to follow up the dynamics of pure tone threshold and DPOAE amplitude changes induced by glycerol with reference to its activity in the inner ear. Selection was made among 38 patients with Meniere's disease for those having positive glycerol test. Pure-tone audiometry and DP-gram were performed in four series: as an initial examination before glycerol intake, 1, 2 and 3 h after. Audiometric changes formed distinct biphasal pattern at all frequencies between 250 and 4,000 Hz. The most dynamic pure tone threshold decrease occurred during the first hour. Between the first and second hour after glycerol ingestion there was a phase of no significant hearing changes. Further pure tone threshold decrease went on within the third hour reaching its top. Observing DPOAE changes, the highest DP amplitude growth occurred after the second and the third hour at DP-gram frequencies 2, 3 and 4 kHz. The fastest DP-amplitude increase was registered as well during the first hour after glycerol ingestion. In 11 persons with both audiometry and DPOAE positive glycerol test, parallel dynamics in the course of the glycerol test was observed. Biphasal glycerol test dynamics suggests the possibility of two mechanisms of glycerol activity in the inner ear.

Although the falling tone is the commonest contour type in tone languages, its distinctive types have never been seriously studied before. This paper examines falling tone types in the Multi-Register and Four-Level tonal model with four parameters： register, length, pitch height and contour. First, a category of ＇pure low tone＇ （PLT） is set up. It includes various contours sharing the same distinctive feature of [＋low]： low falling, low level, low dipping, low rising, and creaky dipping. Then six Rg M falling tone types are identified： high falling, low falling, slight falling, short falling, delayed falling and depressed falling. Four of them also occur in Rg L： high falling with creaky voice, delayed falling with slack voice, depressed falling with slack voice, and low falling with slack voice. Five pairs of distinctive features are called for in classifying falling tones： [±RgM], [±straight], [±long], [±high] and [±slop]. There are at most three falling tones in a single register and up to four in two registers.%降调是声调系统中最为常见的拱形,可对它的区别性类型从未有过全面深入的研究。本文以调域、长度、高度、拱度四参数声调模型来考察降调类型。首先提出一个＂纯低调＂的调型概念,涵盖低降、低平、低凹、低升、嘎裂凹调等以[＋low]为区别特征的拱形。然后辨认出六型出现在中域的降调拱形：高降、低降、微降、短降、高弯降和低凸降。其中四型还出现于低域：弛声高长凸降（弯降变体）、弛声低短凸降、弛声低降、嘎裂高降。用于区分降调的区别特征有五对：调域[±RgM],拱度[±直],长度[±长],高度[±高],再拱度[±斜]。单域中最多三个降调,双域中可有四个降调。

It is possible to measure muscle tone reliably, quickly and objectively using tonometers although they are not yet widely used. In clinical practice, it may be helpful if clinicians could assess the degree of contraction in different parts of a muscle without having to perform time-consuming electromyography measurements. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the responsiveness of different muscle tone characteristics to progressively increased contraction force of quadriceps muscle. Twenty healthy subjects (mean age 39.9 years, 50% women) volunteered. Using 2 different tonometers various muscle viscoelastic properties were measured. The frequency (hertz), logarithmic decrement, and stiffness (newtons per meter) of damped mechanical oscillation of the muscle tissue and tissue compliance (millijoules) were registered from rectus femoris muscle at rest and 20, 40, 60, 80% of maximal voluntary contraction determined using dynamometry. All the values changed linearly with increasing force level. Compliance, oscillation stiffness, and frequency parameters showed large effect sizes (ESs ≥ 0.8). The standardized respoknse mean for compliance was 5.3 (4.8-5.7) mJ, for oscillation stiffness 1.8 (1.3-2.2) N·m(-1), frequency 1.1 (0.6-1.5) Hz, and decrement -0.6 (-1.0 to -0.2). The results indicate that the compliance and oscillation stiffness parameters showed the highest responsiveness and can thus best detect changes in muscle contraction state. The additional value of using tonometers to measure these properties in clinical practice should be investigated further.

the argument of the present writer is that the phenomenon of tone is essentially a .... and phonology. What that means is that in Cibemba names of two countries, .... human language to distinguish prosodic features such as tone and vowel.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies ... The results are interpreted as both phonological and phonetic influences on high tone ... this study provides a ground for cross-dialectal comparison of Southern Bantu tone.

Full Text Available Tone in Bantu languages is rarely studied experimentally. This paper reports a production study which reveals the intricate interaction of tonal context and morphological structure in surface tone realization in Sepedi, a South African Bantu...

Stimulus uncertainty is known to critically affect auditory masking, but its influence on auditory streaming has been largely ignored. Standard ABA-ABA tone sequences were made increasingly uncertain by increasing the sigma of normal distributions from which the frequency, level, or duration of tones were randomly drawn. Consistent with predictions based on a model of masking by Lutfi, Gilbertson, Chang, and Stamas [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 134, 2160-2170 (2013)], the frequency difference for which A and B tones formed separate streams increased as a linear function of sigma in tone frequency but was much less affected by sigma in tone level or duration.

Full Text Available Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder that affects music processing and that is ascribed to a deficit in pitch processing. We investigated whether this deficit extended to pitch processing in speech, notably the pitch changes used to contrast lexical tones in tonal languages. Congenital amusics and matched controls, all non-tonal language speakers, were tested for lexical tone discrimination in Mandarin Chinese (Experiment 1 and in Thai (Experiment 2. Tones were presented in pairs and participants were required to make same/different judgments. Experiment 2 additionally included musical analogs of Thai tones for comparison. Performance of congenital amusics was inferior to that of controls for all materials, suggesting a domain-general pitch-processing deficit. The pitch deficit of amusia is thus not limited to music, but may compromise the ability to process and learn tonal languages. Combined with acoustic analyses of the tone material, the present findings provide new insights into the nature of the pitch-processing deficit exhibited by amusics.

Mandarin Chinese speech sounds (vowels × tones) were presented to younger and older Chinese-native speakers with normal hearing. For the identification of vowel-plus-tone, vowel-only, and tone-only, younger listeners significantly outperformed older listeners. The tone 3 identification scores correlated significantly with the age of older listeners. Moreover, for older listeners, the identification rate of vowel-plus-tone was significantly lower than that of vowel-only and tone-only, whereas for younger listeners, there was no difference among the three identification scores. Therefore, aging negatively affected Mandarin vowel and tone perception, especially when listeners needed to process both phonemic and tonal information.

Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired pitch processing. Although pitch simultaneities are among the fundamental building blocks of Western tonal music, affective responses to simultaneities such as isolated dyads varying in consonance/dissonance or chords varying in major/minor quality have rarely been studied in amusic individuals. Thirteen amusics and thirteen matched controls enculturated to Western tonal music provided pleasantness ratings of sine-tone dyads and complex-tone dyads in piano timbre as well as perceived happiness/sadness ratings of sine-tone triads and complex-tone triads in piano timbre. Acoustical analyses of roughness and harmonicity were conducted to determine whether similar acoustic information contributed to these evaluations in amusics and controls. Amusic individuals' pleasantness ratings indicated sensitivity to consonance and dissonance for complex-tone (piano timbre) dyads and, to a lesser degree, sine-tone dyads, whereas controls showed sensitivity when listening to both tone types. Furthermore, amusic individuals showed some sensitivity to the happiness-major association in the complex-tone condition, but not in the sine-tone condition. Controls rated major chords as happier than minor chords in both tone types. Linear regression analyses revealed that affective ratings of dyads and triads by amusic individuals were predicted by roughness but not harmonicity, whereas affective ratings by controls were predicted by both roughness and harmonicity. We discuss affective sensitivity in congenital amusia in view of theories of affective responses to isolated chords in Western listeners.

A complex tone composed of only higher-order harmonics typically elicits a pitch percept equivalent to the tone's missing fundamental frequency (f0). When judging the direction of residue pitch change between two such tones, however, listeners may have completely opposite perceptual experiences depending on whether they are biased to perceive changes based on the overall spectrum or the missing f0 (harmonic spacing). Individual differences in residue pitch change judgments are reliable and have been associated with musical experience and functional neuroanatomy. Tone languages put greater pitch processing demands on their speakers than non-tone languages, and we investigated whether these lifelong differences in linguistic pitch processing affect listeners' bias for residue pitch. We asked native tone language speakers and native English speakers to perform a pitch judgment task for two tones with missing fundamental frequencies. Given tone pairs with ambiguous pitch changes, listeners were asked to judge the direction of pitch change, where the direction of their response indicated whether they attended to the overall spectrum (exhibiting a spectral bias) or the missing f0 (exhibiting a fundamental bias). We found that tone language speakers are significantly more likely to perceive pitch changes based on the missing f0 than English speakers. These results suggest that tone-language speakers' privileged experience with linguistic pitch fundamentally tunes their basic auditory processing.

Full Text Available In this Paper, we present all-optical shift Register logic with complete Boolean functionality as a representative circuit for modeling and optimization of monolithically integrated components. Proposed optical logic unit is based on nonlinear effects in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA. We show a strategy of optical pulse propagation in SOA based on coupled nonlinear equations describing XGM and FWM effects. These equations are first solved togenerate the pump, probe and conjugate pulses in a SOA. The pulse behavior are analyzed and applied to realize behavior of all-optical NAND gate. Next, the logic is used to implement All-Optical Flip-Flop logic, and its function is verified with the help of truth table. Finally with the help of three Flip Flop a 3-bit shift register is proposed. The full design is simple, compact, economical, thermally stable and integration capable.

Written by OCLC Research Program Officer Karen Smith-Yoshimura and the 13 members of the Registering Researchers in Authority Files Task Group comprised of specialists from the US, UK, and the Netherlands, this report summarizes their research into approaches to providing authoritative researcher identifiers. Registering researchers in some type…

The Danish National Patient Register (NPR) was established in 1977, and it is considered to be the finest of its kind internationally.......The Danish National Patient Register (NPR) was established in 1977, and it is considered to be the finest of its kind internationally....

First language (L1) attrition research focuses on syntactic and morphological deterioration in environments where L1 "attriters" rarely have contact with their L1, such as immigrants. There is no study that investigates L1 attrition in tones and in contexts where L1 can still be often heard. This study examines this attrition type in…

Both timbre and dynamics of isolated piano tones are determined exclusively by the speed with which the hammer hits the strings. This physical view has been challenged by pianists who emphasize the importance of the way the keyboard is touched. This article presents empirical evidence from two perception experiments showing that touch-dependent sound components make sounds with identical hammer velocities but produced with different touch forms clearly distinguishable. The first experiment focused on finger-key sounds: musicians could identify pressed and struck touches. When the finger-key sounds were removed from the sounds, the effect vanished, suggesting that these sounds were the primary identification cue. The second experiment looked at key-keyframe sounds that occur when the key reaches key-bottom. Key-bottom impact was identified from key motion measured by a computer-controlled piano. Musicians were able to discriminate between piano tones that contain a key-bottom sound from those that do not. However, this effect might be attributable to sounds associated with the mechanical components of the piano action. In addition to the demonstrated acoustical effects of different touch forms, visual and tactile modalities may play important roles during piano performance that influence the production and perception of musical expression on the piano.

Nonischemic dilated cardiomyopathies (DCM) are the most common reason for heart failure in developed countries after ischemic disease. They often lead to device therapy. Left ventricular ejection fraction as a single parameter to identify patients at risk for sudden cardiac death revealed inconclusive data in patients with DCM. Autonomic tone, measured by classical and innovative parameters of heart rate variability (HRV), heart rate turbulence or baroreceptor reflex, was demonstrated to give valuable prognostic information especially in patients with ischemic disease and after acute myocardial infarction. In patients with DCM, classical parameters of HRV showed inhomogeneous data in a heterogeneous patient collective caused by unsystematic measurement of single parameters in various patient collectives. Innovative parameters of HRV are promising in patients with DCM and showed prognostic relevance although patient numbers are limited and prospective data are missing. Further studies are needed in this field. Despite the in part convincing evidence for the relevance of autonomic tone as a prognostic marker in patients with DCM, their evaluation is still not part of clinical routine. Additional parameters to estimate the risk of sudden cardiac death are urgently needed.

This paper presents the flip-flop tone (FFT) DMAC protocol, a tone based MAC protocol using directional antennas to solve the deafness problem, hidden terminal and exposed terminal problems simultaneously. It uses two pairs of flip-flop tones. The first pair of tone is to send omni-directionally to reach every neighboring node to announce the start and the end of communication, and therefore to alleviate the deafness problem. The second pair of tone is to send directionally towards the sender. It is used to solve the hidden terminal problem as well as the exposed terminal problem. Evaluation shows that FFT-DMAC can achieve better performance compared to the 802.11 and ToneDMAC protocol.

Previous studies suggest that musicians show an advantage in processing and encoding foreign-language lexical tones. The current experiments examined whether musical experience influences the perceptual learning of lexical tone categories. Experiment I examined whether musicians with no prior experience of tonal languages differed from nonmusicians in the perception of a lexical tone continuum. Experiment II examined whether short-term perceptual training on lexical tones altered the perception of the lexical tone continuum differentially in English-speaking musicians and nonmusicians. Results suggested that (a) musicians exhibited higher sensitivity overall to tonal changes, but perceived the lexical tone continuum in a manner similar to nonmusicians (continuously), in contrast to native Mandarin speakers (categorically); and (b) short-term perceptual training altered perception; however, there were no significant differences between the effects of training on musicians and nonmusicians.

International audience; Tone mapping or range reduction is often used in High Dynamic Range (HDR) visual signal compression to take advantage of the existing image/video coding architectures. Thus, it is important to study the impact of tone mapping on the visual quality of decompressed HDR visual signals. To our knowledge, most of the existing studies focus only on the quality loss in the resultant low dynamic range (LDR) signal (obtained via tone mapping) and typically employ LDR displays f...

Neuromagnetic responses to frequency modulation of a continuous tone were studied in nine subjects. The latencies of the transient responses increased and the amplitudes decreased with decreasing speed of modulation. The equivalent dipoles for modulation of a 1,000 Hz tone were slightly but statistically significantly anterior to the dipoles activated by modulation of a 500 Hz tone. The generation mechanisms of N100m are discussed.

Studies investigating factors that influence tone recognition generally use recognition tests, whereas the majority of the studies on verbal material use self-generated responses in the form of serial recall tests. In the present study we intended to investigate whether tonal and verbal materials share the same cognitive mechanisms, by presenting an experimental instrument that evaluates short-term and working memories for tones, using self-generated sung responses that may be compared to verbal tests. This paradigm was designed according to the same structure of the forward and backward digit span tests, but using digits, pseudowords, and tones as stimuli. The profile of amateur singers and professional singers in these tests was compared in forward and backward digit, pseudoword, tone, and contour spans. In addition, an absolute pitch experimental group was included, in order to observe the possible use of verbal labels in tone memorization tasks. In general, we observed that musical schooling has a slight positive influence on the recall of tones, as opposed to verbal material, which is not influenced by musical schooling. Furthermore, the ability to reproduce melodic contours (up and down patterns) is generally higher than the ability to reproduce exact tone sequences. However, backward spans were lower than forward spans for all stimuli (digits, pseudowords, tones, contour). Curiously, backward spans were disproportionately lower for tones than for verbal material-that is, the requirement to recall sequences in backward rather than forward order seems to differentially affect tonal stimuli. This difference does not vary according to musical expertise.

Background Chinese tones are considered important in Chinese discrimination.However,the relevant reports on auditory central mechanisms concerning Chinese tones are limited.In this study,mismatch negativity (MMN),one of the event related potentials (ERP),was used to investigate pre-attentive processing of Chinese tones,and the differences between the function of oddball MMN and that of control MMN are discussed.Methods Ten subjects (six men and four women) with normal hearing participated in the study.A sequence was presented to these subjects through a loudspeaker,the sequence included four blocks,a control block and three oddball blocks.The control block was made up of five components (one pure tone and four Chinese tones) with equiprobability.The oddball blocks were made up of two components,one was a standard stimulus (tone 1) and the other was a deviant stimulus (tone 2 or tone 3 or tone 4).Electroencephalogram (EEG) data were recorded when the sequence was presented and MMNs were obtained from the analysis of the EEG data.Results Two kinds of MMNs were obtained,oddball MMN and control MMN.Oddball MMN was obtained by subtracting the ERP elicited by standard stimulation (tone 1) from that elicited by deviant stimulation (tone 2 or tone 3 or tone 4) in the oddball block; control MMN was obtained by subtracting the ERP elicited by the tone in control block,which was the same tone as the deviant stimulation in the oddball block,from the ERP elicited by deviant stimulation (tone 2 or tone 3 or tone 4)in the oddball block.There were two negative waves in oddball MMN,one appeared around 150 ms (oddball MMN 1),the other around 300 ms (oddball MMN 2).Only one negative wave appeared around 300 ms in control MMN,which was corresponding to the oddball MMN 2.We performed the statistical analyses in each paradigm for latencies and amplitudes for oddball MMN 2 in discriminating the three Chinese tones and reported no significant differences.But the latencies and amplitudes

While airways have some degree of baseline tone, the level and variability of this tone is not known. It is also unclear whether there is a difference in airway tone or in the variability of airway tone between asthmatic and healthy individuals. This study examined airway tone and intraindividual airway tone heterogeneity (variance of airway tone) in vivo in 19 individuals with asthma compared with 9 healthy adults. All participants underwent spirometry, body plethysmography, and high-resolut...

Registering researchers in some type of authority file or identifier system has become more compelling as both institutions and researchers recognize the need to compile their scholarly output. The report presents functional requirements and recommendations for six stakeholders: researchers, funders

through the DHR. Approximately 9,000 primary THAs and 1,500 revisions are reported to the register annually. CONCLUSION: The DHR is important for monitoring and improvement of treatment with THA and is a valuable tool for research in THA surgery due to the high quality of prospective collected data....... All Danish orthopedic departments - both public and private - report to the register, and registration is compulsory. MAIN VARIABLES: The main variables in the register include civil registration number, indication for primary and revision surgery, operation date and side, and postoperative...... complications. Completeness of primary and revision surgery is evaluated annually and validation of a number of variables has been carried out. DESCRIPTIVE DATA: A total of 139,525 primary THAs and 22,118 revisions have been registered in the DHR between January 1, 1995 and December 31, 2014. Since 1995...

Lexical tone is one of the most prominent features in the phonological representation of words in Chinese. However, little, if any, research to date has directly evaluated how young Chinese children's lexical tone identification skills contribute to vocabulary acquisition and character recognition. The present study distinguished lexical tones from segmental phonological awareness and morphological awareness in order to estimate the unique contribution of lexical tone in early vocabulary acquisition and character recognition. A sample of 199 Cantonese children aged 5-6 years was assessed on measures of lexical tone identification, segmental phonological awareness, morphological awareness, nonverbal ability, vocabulary knowledge, and Chinese character recognition. It was found that lexical tone awareness and morphological awareness were both associated with vocabulary knowledge and character recognition. However, there was a significant relationship between lexical tone awareness and both vocabulary knowledge and character recognition, even after controlling for the effects of age, nonverbal ability, segmental phonological awareness and morphological awareness. These findings suggest that lexical tone is a key factor accounting for individual variance in young children's lexical acquisition in Chinese, and that lexical tone should be considered in understanding how children learn new Chinese vocabulary words, in either oral or written forms.

Singing is as natural as speaking for the majority of people. Yet some individuals (i.e., 10-15%) are poor singers, typically performing or imitating pitches and melodies inaccurately. This condition, commonly referred to as "tone deafness," has been observed both in the presence and absence of deficient pitch perception. In this article we review the existing literature concerning normal singing, poor-pitch singing, and, briefly, the sources of this condition. Considering that pitch plays a prominent role in the structure of both music and speech we also focus on the possibility that speech production (or imitation) is similarly impaired in poor-pitch singers. Preliminary evidence from our laboratory suggests that pitch imitation may be selectively inaccurate in the music domain without being affected in speech. This finding points to separability of mechanisms subserving pitch production in music and language.

Full Text Available Abstract Background Recent evidence for a tight coupling of sensorimotor processes in trained musicians led to the question of whether this coupling extends to preattentively mediated reflexes; particularly, whether a classically conditioned response in one of the domains (auditory is generalized to another (tactile/motor on the basis of a prior association in a second-order Pavlovian paradigm. An eyeblink conditioning procedure was performed in 17 pianists, serving as a model for overlearned audiomotor integration, and 14 non-musicians. Results: During the training session, subjects were conditioned to respond to auditory stimuli (piano tones. During a subsequent testing session, when subjects performed keystrokes on a silent piano, pianists showed significantly higher blink rates than non-musicians. Conclusion These findings suggest a tight coupling of the auditory and motor domains in musicians, pointing towards training-dependent mechanisms of strong cross-modal sensorimotor associations even on sub-cognitive processing levels.

Full Text Available This paper discusses the empirical assessments employed on two versions of a Sesotho tone labeling algorithm. This algorithm uses linguistically-defined Sesotho tonal rules to predict the tone labels on the syllables of Sesotho words. The two...

In piano playing, different ways of touch lead to different tones. The effects of changing forces on keys are presented by changing interaction between hammer and string. The thesis focuses on several important variables in hammer-string system and draws conclusions to the question about piano touch and tone.

Here we investigate the transmission of a pilot tone through an interferometric wavelength converter (IWC) in conjunction with a 2.5 Gbit/s experiment. The pilot tone is added by sinusoidal modulation of the bias current to the signal laser. After the IWC (Michelson interferometer) the converted...

This article extends Optimality Theoretic studies to the research on second language tone phonology. Specifically, this work analyses the acquisition of identical tone sequences in Mandarin Chinese by adult speakers of three non-tonal languages: English, Japanese and Korean. This study finds that the learners prefer not to use identical lexical…

This article extends Optimality Theoretic studies to the research on second language tone phonology. Specifically, this work analyses the acquisition of identical tone sequences in Mandarin Chinese by adult speakers of three non-tonal languages: English, Japanese and Korean. This study finds that the learners prefer not to use identical lexical…

In most languages, focus (i.e. highlighting information) is marked by modifying the melody of the sentence. But how is focus marked in a Chinese dialect with eight different citation tones and a complex tonal phonology? This thesis investigates the connection between tonal realization and tone chang

Sixty-seven fibers of a sample of 401 in the auditory nerve of grassfrogs (Rana temporaria) showed one-tone suppression, i.e., their spontaneous activity was suppressed by tones. All fibers were afferents from the amphibian papilla with best frequencies between 100 and 400 Hz. Best suppression...

This study examined whether musical training, ethnicity, and experience with a natural tone language influenced sensitivity to tone while listening to an artificial tone language. The language was designed with three tones, modeled after level-tone African languages. Participants listened to a 15-min random concatenation of six 3-syllable words.…

In week-old rats, lesions of the dorsolateral pontine tegmentum (DLPT) and nucleus pontis oralis (PnO) have opposing effects on nuchal muscle tone. Specifically, pups with DLPT lesions exhibit prolonged bouts of nuchal muscle atonia (indicative of sleep) and pups with PnO lesions exhibit prolonged bouts of high nuchal muscle tone (indicative of wakefulness). Here we test the hypothesis that nuchal muscle tone is modulated, at least in part, by cholinergically mediated interactions between these two regions. First, in unanesthetized pups, we found that chemical infusion of the cholinergic agonist carbachol (22 mm, 0.1 microL) within the DLPT produced high muscle tone. Next, chemical lesions of the PnO were used to produce a chronic state of high nuchal muscle tone, at which time the cholinergic antagonist scopolamine (10 mm, 0.1 microL) was infused into the DLPT. Scopolamine effectively decreased nuchal muscle tone, thus suggesting that lesions of the PnO increase muscle tone via cholinergic activation of the DLPT. Using 2-deoxyglucose autoradiography, metabolic activation throughout the DLPT was observed after PnO lesions. Finally, consistent with the hypothesis that PnO inactivation produces high muscle tone, infusion of the sodium channel blocker lidocaine (2%) into the PnO of unanesthetized pups produced rapid increases in muscle tone. We conclude that, even early in infancy, the DLPT is critically involved in the regulation of muscle tone and behavioral state, and that its activity is modulated by a cholinergic mechanism that is directly or indirectly controlled by the PnO.

We investigated music and language processing in a group of early bilinguals who spoke a tone language and a non-tone language (Cantonese and Dutch). We assessed online speech-music processing interactions, that is, interactions that occur when speech and music are processed simultaneously in songs,

This effort compares the graduates of the three types of Registered Nurse (RN) education programs (three-year Diploma in Nursing, two-year Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN), and four-year Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing). The basic objective is to determine whether they are perfect substitutes, especially whether ADN graduates can adequately…

Full Text Available Inattention has been a major problem in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, accounting for their behavioral and cognitive dysfunctions. However, there are at least three processing steps underlying attentional control for auditory change detection, namely pre-attentive change detection, involuntary attention orienting, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. This study aimed to examine whether children with ADHD would show deficits in any of these subcomponents by using mismatch negativity (MMN, P3a, and late discriminative negativity (LDN as event-related potential (ERP markers, under the passive auditory oddball paradigm. Two types of stimuli - pure tones and Mandarin lexical tones - were used to examine if the deficits were general across linguistic and non-linguistic domains. Participants included 15 native Mandarin-speaking children with ADHD and 16 age-matched controls (across groups, age ranged between 6 and 15 years. Two passive auditory oddball paradigms (lexical tones and pure tones were applied. Pure tone paradigm included standard stimuli (1000 Hz, 80% and two deviant stimuli (1015 Hz and 1090 Hz, 10% each. The Mandarin lexical tone paradigm’s standard stimuli was /yi3/ (80% and two deviant stimuli were /yi1/ and /yi2/ (10% each. The results showed no MMN difference, but did show attenuated P3a and enhanced LDN to the large deviants for both pure and lexical tone changes in the ADHD group. Correlation analysis showed that children with higher ADHD tendency, as indexed by parents’ and teachers’ rating on ADHD symptoms, showed less positive P3a amplitudes when responding to large lexical tone deviants. Thus, children with ADHD showed impaired auditory change detection for both pure tones and lexical tones in both involuntary attention switching, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. These ERP markers may therefore be used for evaluation of anti-ADHD drugs that aim to alleviate these

Introduction: The establishing of three Danish population based registers, namely the Fertility Database, the Register of Legally Induced Abortions and the In Vitro Fertilisation register aimed at providing data for surveying of reproductive outcome. Content: The registers include information...... on births, abortions and assisted reproduction as well as selected characteristics of the women (and men) involved. Validity and Coverage: Both the validity and coverage of each register is considered of high quality. Conclusions: These registers provide, both individually and in combination, unique...

Full Text Available Abstract Recent studies have shown that adipose tissue is an active endocrine and paracrine organ secreting several mediators called adipokines. Adipokines include hormones, inflammatory cytokines and other proteins. In obesity, adipose tissue becomes dysfunctional, resulting in an overproduction of proinflammatory adipokines and a lower production of anti-inflammatory adipokines. The pathological accumulation of dysfunctional adipose tissue that characterizes obesity is a major risk factor for many other diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension. Multiple physiological roles have been assigned to adipokines, including the regulation of vascular tone. For example, the unidentified adipocyte-derived relaxing factor (ADRF released from adipose tissue has been shown to relax arteries. Besides ADRF, other adipokines such as adiponectin, omentin and visfatin are vasorelaxants. On the other hand, angiotensin II and resistin are vasoconstrictors released by adipocytes. Reactive oxygen species, leptin, tumour necrosis factor α, interleukin-6 and apelin share both vasorelaxing and constricting properties. Dysregulated synthesis of the vasoactive and proinflammatory adipokines may underlie the compromised vascular reactivity in obesity and obesity-related disorders.

This study examined the neural substrates underlying the implementation of phonological rule in lexical tone by the Tone 3 sandhi phenomenon in Mandarin Chinese. Tone 3 sandhi is traditionally described as the substitution of Tone 3 with Tone 2 when followed by another Tone 3 (33 →23) during speech production. Tone 3 sandhi enables the examination of tone processing in the phonological level with the least involvement of segments. Using the fMRI technique, we measured brain activations corresponding to the monosyllable and disyllable sequences of the four Chinese lexical tones, while manipulating the requirement on overt oral response. The application of Tone 3 sandhi to disyllable sequence of Tone 3 was confirmed by our behavioral results. Larger brain responses to overtly produced disyllable Tone 3 (33 > 11, 22, and 44) were found in right posterior IFG by both whole-brain and ROI analyses. We suggest that the right IFG was responsible for the processing of Tone 3 sandhi. Intense temporo-frontal interaction is needed in speech production for self-monitoring. The involvement of the right IFG in tone production might result from its interaction with the right auditory cortex, which is known to specialize in pitch. Future studies using tools with better temporal resolutions are needed to illuminate the dynamic interaction between the right inferior frontal regions and the left-lateralized language network in tone languages.

We quantified the relative simplicity of frequency ratios and reanalyzed data from several studies on the perception of simultaneous and sequential tones. Simplicity of frequency ratios accounted for judgments of consonance and dissonance and for judgments of similarity across a wide range of tasks and listeners. It also accounted for the relative ease of discriminating tone patterns by musically experienced and inexperienced listeners. These findings confirm the generality of previous suggestions of perceptual processing advantages for pairs of tones related by simple frequency ratios.

This paper proposes a novel algorithmic approach of image enhancement via optimal contrast-tone mapping. In a fundamental departure from the current practice of histogram equalization for contrast enhancement, the proposed approach maximizes expected contrast gain subject to an upper limit on tone distortion and optionally to other constraints that suppress artifacts. The underlying contrast-tone optimization problem can be solved efficiently by linear programming. This new constrained optimization approach for image enhancement is general, and the user can add and fine tune the constraints to achieve desired visual effects. Experimental results demonstrate clearly superior performance of the new approach over histogram equalization and its variants.

There are several methodology based on voice analysis to evaluate nasal airway. Here we introduce a new quantitative index based on voice spectrum analysis to evaluate nasal obstruction. Ten subjects of nasal blockage were instructed to produced the sustained consonant-vowel syllable /m partial partial differential/ at comfortable levels of speech for at least 5 seconds. After nasal decongestant treatment, the second voice sample was collected. Sound spectrum was obtained by the algorithm of fast Fourier transform and the fundamental frequency (F0) was calculated by the method of autocorrelation. Voice low tone to high tone ratio (VLHR) was defined as the division of low frequency power (LFP) into high frequency power (HFP) of the sound power spectrum and was finally expressed in decibels. The cut-off frequency was the product of F0 and square root of (4 x 5). The VLHR after nasal decongestant treatment increased significantly as compared with that before treatment (P < 0.01). VLHR is a new index derived from sound spectral analysis and that may detect the changes in frequency characteristics of voice during treatment for nasal obstruction. The index is quantitative, non-invasive, and potentially useful for basic researches and clinical applications.

World Wide Human Geography Data Working Group — The Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT Project) monitors the world's broadcast, print, and web news from nearly every corner of every country in...

Full Text Available The authors investigate the acoustic realisation of tone in short continuous utterances in Yoruba. Fundamental frequency contours are extracted for automatically aligned syllables from a speech corpus of 33 speakers collected for speech recognition...

Psychophysical measurements of two-tone masking [E. Zwicker, Acustica 4, 415-420 (1954)] were made at 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz utilizing a masker level of 62 dB SPL/tone. Fifty-eight "untrained" subjects were tested using a single run of a 4IFC adaptive procedure for each condition. Individual data were highly variable. Average data were systematic; they were analyzed using a two-line-regression procedure and the obtained critical-bandwidth estimates approximated normative values. Analysis of the literature revealed that a substantial increase of estimated critical bandwidth versus masker level occurs in two-tone masking. A portion of this increase appears artificial and stems from the relative effectiveness of the higher frequency masker tone at high masker levels. An alternative masker-frequency spacing is suggested to reduce level effects. Implications for an underlying critical-band mechanism are discussed.

to assess and measure military governance and integrity. It appears that ... corrupt military environment more effectively by finding the right tone. Method ..... In order to bring about a change in an ethically soiled corporate military culture, the ...

The Copenhagen School Health Records Register is an electronic register of health examination information on 372,636 children who attended school in Copenhagen, Denmark from 1936 to 2005.......The Copenhagen School Health Records Register is an electronic register of health examination information on 372,636 children who attended school in Copenhagen, Denmark from 1936 to 2005....

To investigate how a low tone (tone-3,T3) syllable in Chinese can be perceived to be focal ac-canted or not,a total of 156 sentences containing tone-3 words were synthesized and used as stimuli in a perceptual study.The sentences differed in the falling value between the two high pitches,and in the dura-tion and phonation types of the T3 syllables.Thirty-nine subjects were asked to judge where the focus or accent was for each sentence.The results show that at least three degrees of pitch drop are involved in the focus recognition: a big sized drop of about 10 semitones; a middle sized drop of about 6 semitones; a small sized drop of about 2 semitones.The results suggest that the three sizes of pitch drop have different indica-tions in Chinese intonation,depending on both the tone and the tone combination.In perception,there are various ways to realize tone-3 focus in the Tx-T3-Ty sentences series,but in production or for text-to-speech synthesis,the rule simply is making a middle sized pitch drop with a long and creaky T3 syllable.Similarly,to focus on the low tone syllable in the T3-Tx-Ty sentences,a creaky T3 syllable is essential.However,a long T3 syllable is a strong determinant for a low tone focus in the Tx-Ty-T3 sentences.

The principle of applying a pilot tone to an OTDM signal, in order to identify a specific channel, is presented. The impact on BER system performance is characterised as function of modulation index.......The principle of applying a pilot tone to an OTDM signal, in order to identify a specific channel, is presented. The impact on BER system performance is characterised as function of modulation index....

Gurfinkel and colleagues (2006) recently found that healthy adults dynamically modulate postural muscle tone in the body axis during anti-gravity postural maintenance and that this modulation is inversely correlated with axial stiffness. Our objective in the present study was to investigate whether dynamic modulation of axial postural tone can change through training. We examined whether teachers of the Alexander Technique (AT), who undergo “long-term” (3-year) training, have greater modulati...

The control of tonic muscular activity remains poorly understood. While abnormal tone is commonly assessed clinically by measuring the passive resistance of relaxed limbs1, no systems are available to study tonic muscle control in a natural, active state of antigravity support. We have developed a device (Twister) to study tonic regulation of axial and proximal muscles during active postural maintenance (i.e. postural tone). Twister rotates axial body regions relative to each other about the ...

The effect of the rank of the harmonics on sequential stream segregation of complex tones was investigated for normal-hearing participants with no musical training. It was hypothesized that stream segregation would be greater for tones with high pitch salience, as assessed by fundamental frequency....... There was a significant trend for less stream segregation with increasing harmonic rank. The amount of stream segregation was inversely correlated with the f0 difference limens, consistent with the hypothesis....

@@ The Chinese economy registered a moderate slowdown over the course of 2011, the World Bank said in its East Asia and Pacific Economic Update.During the first nine months of 2011, growth slowed from 10.6 percent in 2010 to 9.4 percent.The bank estimates that China's economic growth is expected at 9.1 percent in 2011, 8.4 percent in 2012 and roughly similar rates thereafter.

A system and method for visualization of subsurface anatomy includes obtaining a first image from a first camera and a second image from a second camera or a second channel of the first camera, where the first and second images contain shared anatomical structures. The second camera and the secon....... A visual interface displays the registered visualization of the first and second images. The system and method are particularly useful for imaging during minimally invasive surgery, such as robotic surgery....

International audience; Neoclassical compounds are special in French morphology. With regard to their final elements, they are at the border of composition and derivation. If originally they were used to designate scientific or technical concepts, today they are commonly used in everyday language. In this paper, we will see how these different language registers come into play in the construction of these words containing neoclassical elements, both from a formal and from a semantic point of ...

The control of tonic muscular activity remains poorly understood. While abnormal tone is commonly assessed clinically by measuring the passive resistance of relaxed limbs, no systems are available to study tonic muscle control in a natural, active state of antigravity support. We have developed a device (Twister) to study tonic regulation of axial and proximal muscles during active postural maintenance (i.e. postural tone). Twister rotates axial body regions relative to each other about the vertical axis during stance, so as to twist the neck, trunk or hip regions. This twisting imposes length changes on axial muscles without changing the body's relationship to gravity. Because Twister does not provide postural support, tone must be regulated to counteract gravitational torques. We quantify this tonic regulation by the restive torque to twisting, which reflects the state of all muscles undergoing length changes, as well as by electromyography of relevant muscles. Because tone is characterized by long-lasting low-level muscle activity, tonic control is studied with slow movements that produce "tonic" changes in muscle length, without evoking fast "phasic" responses. Twister can be reconfigured to study various aspects of muscle tone, such as co-contraction, tonic modulation to postural changes, tonic interactions across body segments, as well as perceptual thresholds to slow axial rotation. Twister can also be used to provide a quantitative measurement of the effects of disease on axial and proximal postural tone and assess the efficacy of intervention.

This study uses production and perception experiments to explore tone 3 focus in Mandarin Chinese. Overall, contrastive focus in Mandarin is clearly marked with increased duration, intensity, and pitch range: in the experiments, listeners identified focused syllables correctly more than 90% of the time. However, a tone 3 syllable offers a smaller capacity for pitch range expansion under focus, and also yields less intensity increase; in addition, local dissimilation increases the duration, intensity, and pitch range of adjacent syllables within the same phrase as a focused tone 3 syllable. As a result, tone 3 focus was less well identified by listeners (77.1%). We suggest that the relatively poor identification of tone 3 focus is due to the smaller capacity for pitch range expansion, the confusion from within-phrase local dissimilatory effects, and the relatively weak intensity of tone 3. This study demonstrates that even within a language where purely prosodic marking of focus is clear, the location of prosodic focus can be difficult to identify in certain circumstances. Our results underline the conclusion, established in other work, that prosodic marking of focus is not universal, but is expressed through the prosodic system of each language.

Music cognition research has provided evidence that the tonal function of a musical event influences perception and memory. Our study investigated whether tonal function influences a basic temporal judgment, notably the detection of a temporal change disrupting a sequence's regularity. The sequences consisted of six musical events presented in isochrony (or with the fifth event occurring earlier or later): Three chords (instilling a tonal context) were followed by a tone (repeated three times). The tones fulfilled one of two tonal functions in the tonal context. Participants had to detect whether the sequence contained a temporal change and were not informed about tonal manipulations. Discrimination performance (as measured by d') showed an influence of tonal function on temporal change detection: Performance was better for the tonic tone (having the most important tonal function in the key) than for the unstable leading tone, the less stable mediant tone, and even than the stable dominant tone. The outcome shows the influence of listeners' tonal knowledge on a perceptual time judgment and suggests that processing of tonal and temporal structures interact at some stage of processing.

To examine whether brain electrical responses to environmental stimuli were influenced by emotional contexts, event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by nonstartle probe tones were recorded from 13 student volunteers while they were viewing emotionally positive, neutral, and negative slides of the International Affective Picture System. The auditory stimuli consisted of high-deviant (2000 Hz, p=.08), low-deviant (1050 Hz, p=.08), and standard (1000 Hz, p=.84) tones with a mean onset-to-onset interval of 600 ms. Participants were told to ignore the tones. High-deviant tones elicited a larger N1 (peaking around 100 ms) when participants were viewing negative slides than when viewing positive slides. The amplitude of the P2 elicited by standard tones (peaking around 170 ms) was smaller when participants were viewing positive slides than when viewing negative and neutral slides. The amplitude of the mismatch negativity (150-200 ms) tended to reduce during positive slide presentation, but this difference appeared to be due to reduction of the P2 elicited by standard tones. These findings suggest that visually induced emotional states have a sequential effect on auditory information processing, in that the influence of negative emotion appears at an earlier stage than that of positive emotion.

Today's countertenors possess vocal ranges similar to the mezzo-soprano, and are trained to sing with a vibrant, focused tone. Little research has been conducted on the registers of the countertenor voice. Advancement in vocal techniques in the countertenor voice from the late 20th century to the present has been rapid. This treatise attempts to define the registers of the countertenor voice, and is intended as a resource for singers and teachers. The voices of eleven North American countertenors were recorded and analyzed using VoceVista Pro software, which was developed and designed by Donald Miller. Through spectrographic and electroglottographic analysis, the registers of the countertenor voice were identified and outlined.

Previous cochlear implant studies using isolated electrical stimulus pulses in animal models have reported that intracochlear monopolar stimulus configurations elicit broad extents of neuronal activation within the central auditory system-much broader than the activation patterns produced by bipolar electrode pairs or acoustic tones. However, psychophysical and speech reception studies that use sustained pulse trains do not show clear performance differences for monopolar versus bipolar configurations. To test whether monopolar intracochlear stimulation can produce selective activation of the inferior colliculus, we measured activation widths along the tonotopic axis of the inferior colliculus for acoustic tones and 1,000-pulse/s electrical pulse trains in guinea pigs and cats. Electrical pulse trains were presented using an array of 6-12 stimulating electrodes distributed longitudinally on a space-filling silicone carrier positioned in the scala tympani of the cochlea. We found that for monopolar, bipolar, and acoustic stimuli, activation widths were significantly narrower for sustained responses than for the transient response to the stimulus onset. Furthermore, monopolar and bipolar stimuli elicited similar activation widths when compared at stimulus levels that produced similar peak spike rates. Surprisingly, we found that in guinea pigs, monopolar and bipolar stimuli produced narrower sustained activation than 60 dB sound pressure level acoustic tones when compared at stimulus levels that produced similar peak spike rates. Therefore, we conclude that intracochlear electrical stimulation using monopolar pulse trains can produce activation patterns that are at least as selective as bipolar or acoustic stimulation.

Four experiments were conducted to investigate the interplay between context and tone of voice in the perception of sarcasm. These experiments emphasized the role of contrast effects in sarcasm perception exclusively by means of auditory stimuli whereas most past research has relied on written material. In all experiments, a positive or negative computer-generated context spoken in a flat emotional tone was followed by a literally positive statement spoken in a sincere or sarcastic tone of voice. Participants indicated for each statement whether the intonation was sincere or sarcastic. In Experiment 1, a congruent context/tone of voice pairing (negative/sarcastic, positive/sincere) produced fast response times and proportions of sarcastic responses in the direction predicted by the tone of voice. Incongruent pairings produced mid-range proportions and slower response times. Experiment 2 introduced ambiguous contexts to determine whether a lower context/statements contrast would affect the proportion of sarcastic responses and response time. Results showed the expected findings for proportions (values between those obtained for congruent and incongruent pairings in the direction predicted by the tone of voice). However, response time failed to produce the predicted pattern, suggesting potential issues with the choice of stimuli. Experiments 3 and 4 extended the results of Experiments 1 and 2, respectively, to auditory stimuli based on written vignettes used in neuropsychological assessment. Results were exactly as predicted by contrast effects in both experiments. Taken together, the findings suggest that both context and tone influence how sarcasm is perceived while supporting the importance of contrast effects in sarcasm perception.

on births, abortions and assisted reproduction as well as selected characteristics of the women (and men) involved. Validity and Coverage: Both the validity and coverage of each register is considered of high quality. Conclusions: These registers provide, both individually and in combination, unique......Introduction: The establishing of three Danish population based registers, namely the Fertility Database, the Register of Legally Induced Abortions and the In Vitro Fertilisation register aimed at providing data for surveying of reproductive outcome. Content: The registers include information...... opportunities for undertaking detailed and comprehensive research in the field of reproduction....

There are two nationwide population-based registers for multiple sclerosis (MS) in Denmark. The oldest register is The Danish Multiple Sclerosis Registry (DMSR), which is an epidemiological register for estimation of prevalence and incidence of MS and survival, and for identifying exposures earlier...... between a number of different environmental exposures in the past and the subsequent risk of MS. Some of these studies have been able to exonerate suspected risk factors. The other register, the nationwide Danish Multiple Sclerosis Treatment Register, is a follow-up register for all patients who have...

Noise and emissions are critical technical issues in the development of aircraft engines. This necessitates the development of accurate models to predict the noise radiated from aero-engines. Turbine tones radiated from the exhaust nozzle of a turbofan engine propagate through turbulent jet shear layers which causes scattering of sound. In the far-field, measurements of the tones may exhibit spectral broadening, where owing to scattering, the tones are no longer narrow band peaks in the spectrum. This effect is known colloquially as 'haystacking'. In this article a comprehensive analytical model to predict spectral broadening for a tone radiated through a circular jet, for an observer in the far field, is presented. This model extends previous work by the authors which considered the prediction of spectral broadening at far-field observer locations outside the cone of silence. The modelling uses high-frequency asymptotic methods and a weak-scattering assumption. A realistic shear layer velocity profile and turbulence characteristics are included in the model. The mathematical formulation which details the spectral broadening, or haystacking, of a single-frequency, single azimuthal order turbine tone is outlined. In order to validate the model, predictions are compared with experimental results, albeit only at polar angle equal to 90°. A range of source frequencies from 4 to 20kHz, and jet velocities from 20 to 60ms-1, are examined for validation purposes. The model correctly predicts how the spectral broadening is affected when the source frequency and jet velocity are varied.

Full Text Available This paper provides a detailed representational analysis of the morpho-prosodic system of underived nouns in a dialect of Swedish. It shows that the morphology, stress and tonal patterns are not as complex as they first appear once the data are looked at in sufficient detail. Further, it shows that the renowned Swedish "lexical pitch accent" is not the result of lexical tones/tonemes. Rather, Swedish is like all other languages and uses tones to mark the edges of prosodic constituents on the surface. "Accent 2" occurs when tones mark the edge of a structural uneven trochee (i.e. recursive foot and "accent 1" occurs elsewhere. This analysis is counter all other treatments of North Germanic tones and denies the almost unquestioned assumption that there is an underlying tone specification on roots and/or affixes in many North Germanic varieties. At the same time, it unifies the intuitions behind the three previous approaches found in the literature.

Full Text Available We study the equalization procedure in discrete multitone (DMT-based systems, in particular, in DMT-based ADSL systems. Traditionally, equalization is performed in the time domain by means of a channel shortening filter. Shifting the equalization operations to the frequency domain, as is done in per-tone equalization, increases the achieved bitrate by 5Ã¢Â€Â“10%. We show that the application of the turbo principle to per-tone equalization can provide significant additional gains. In the proposed receiver structure, referred to as a Ã¢Â€Âœturbo-per-tone equalizationÃ¢Â€Â structure, equalization and decoding are performed in an iterative fashion. Equalization is done by means of a linear minimum mean squared error (MMSE equalizer, using a priori information. We give a description of an efficient implementation of such an equalizer in the per-tone structure. Simulations show that we obtain a bitrate increase of 12Ã¢Â€Â“16% compared to the original per-tone equalization-based receiver structure.

Although many studies have explored the relation between reaction time (RT) and loudness, including effects of intensity, frequency, and binaural summation, comparable work on spectral summation is rare. However, most real-world sounds are not pure tones and typically have bandwidths covering several critical bands. Since comparing to a 1-kHz pure tone, the reference tone, is important for loudness measurement and standardization, the present work focuses on comparing RTs for broadband noise to those for 1-kHz pure tones in three experiments using different spectral and binaural configurations. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 yield good quantitative agreement with spectral loudness summation models for moderate and high sound pressure levels, measured using both pink noise covering almost the entire hearing range and bandpass-filtered pink noise with different center frequencies. However, at lower levels, the RT measurements yield an interaction of level and bandwidth, which is not in line with loudness scaling data. In Experiment 3, which investigated the binaural summation of broadband sounds, the binaural gain for white noise was determined to be 9 dB, which is somewhat larger than what had been found in previous RT measurements using 1-kHz pure tones.

Mandarin Chinese tone patterns vary in one of the four ways, i.e, (1) high level; (2) rising; (3) low falling and rising; and (4) high falling. The present study is to examine the efficacy of an artificial neural network in recognizing these tone patterns. Speech data were recorded from 12 children (3-6 years of age) and 15 adults. All subjects were native Mandarin Chinese speakers. The fundamental frequencies (FO) of each monosyllabic word of the speech data were extracted with an autocorrelation method. The pitch data(i.e., the FO contours) were the inputs to a feed-forward backpropagation artificial neural network. The number of inputs to the neural network varied from 1 to 16 and the hidden layer of the network contained neurons that varied from 1 to 16 in number. The output of the network consisted of four neurons representing the four tone patterns of Mandarin Chinese. After being trained with the Levenberg-Marquardt optimization, the neural network was able to successfully classify the tone patterns with an accuracy of about 90% correct for speech samples from both adults and children. The artificial neural network may provide an objective and effective way of assessing tone production in prelingually-deafened children who have received cochlear implants.

The vasomotor tone is an essential determinant of blood pressure. Vascular resistance is the result of a calculation including vasomotor tone, blood flow and blood viscosity. The vascular tone is modulated by the sympathetic system and the direct actions of drugs (patient's pathology, anaesthesia). The pressure and flow allow the vascular tone apprehension. A decrease in vasomotor tone lowers the mean arterial pressure and may cause an intense vasoplegia with arterial vascular resistance below than 800 dyn/s/cm(5) leading to a lack of tissue oxygenation. Vasomotor paralysis can be caused by the patient medications or an intense inflammatory reaction starting at the extracorporeal circulation onset. Monitoring parameters of extracorporeal circulation such as pressure, flow, arterial and venous oxygen saturation, blood level in the venous reservoir, and extensively blood gases, haemoglobin, CO(2) partial pressure level of the oxygenator vent, bispectral index, and oxygen saturation of cerebral tissue are reviewed. They will know the vasoplegia consequences and bear an indication of adequate tissue oxygenation. It may be obtained by using vasopressors (ephedrine, norepinephrine, terbutalin and vasopressin) methylene blue, increasing blood viscosity (erythrocytes) and blood flow, even by inducing hypothermia.

While airways have some degree of baseline tone, the level and variability of this tone is not known. It is also unclear whether there is a difference in airway tone or in the variability of airway tone between asthmatic and healthy individuals. This study examined airway tone and intraindividual airway tone heterogeneity (variance of airway tone) in vivo in 19 individuals with asthma compared with 9 healthy adults. All participants underwent spirometry, body plethysmography, and high-resolution computed tomography at baseline and after maximum bronchodilation with albuterol. Airway tone was defined as the percent difference in airway diameter after albuterol at total lung capacity compared with baseline. The amount of airway tone in each airway varied both within and between subjects. The average airway tone did not differ significantly between the two groups (P = 0.09), but the intraindividual airway tone heterogeneity did (P = 0.016). Intraindividual airway tone heterogeneity was strongly correlated with airway tone (r = 0.78, P tone heterogeneity and conventional lung function outcomes. Intraindividual airway tone heterogeneity appears to be an important characteristic of airway pathophysiology in asthma.

Abstract Introduction: To describe the Danish National Health Service Register in relation to research. Content: The register contains data collected for administrative and scientific purposes from health contractors in primary health care. It includes information about citizens, providers...

registers are discussed, and the stages of development of a register are reviewed: Ascertainment of probands, construction of pedigrees, identification of family members at risk, and screening of members at risk. The problem of data confidentiality is discussed....

Composers often pick specific instruments to convey a given emotional tone in their music, partly due to their expressive possibilities, but also due to their timbres in specific registers and at given dynamic markings. Of interest to both music psychology and music informatics from a computational point of view is the relation between the acoustic properties that give rise to the timbre at a given pitch and the perceived emotional quality of the tone. Musician and nonmusician listeners were presented with 137 tones produced at a fixed dynamic marking (forte) playing tones at pitch class D# across each instrument's entire pitch range and with different playing techniques for standard orchestral instruments drawn from the brass, woodwind, string, and pitched percussion families. They rated each tone on six analogical-categorical scales in terms of emotional valence (positive/negative and pleasant/unpleasant), energy arousal (awake/tired), tension arousal (excited/calm), preference (like/dislike), and familiarity. Linear mixed models revealed interactive effects of musical training, instrument family, and pitch register, with non-linear relations between pitch register and several dependent variables. Twenty-three audio descriptors from the Timbre Toolbox were computed for each sound and analyzed in two ways: linear partial least squares regression (PLSR) and nonlinear artificial neural net modeling. These two analyses converged in terms of the importance of various spectral, temporal, and spectrotemporal audio descriptors in explaining the emotion ratings, but some differences also emerged. Different combinations of audio descriptors make major contributions to the three emotion dimensions, suggesting that they are carried by distinct acoustic properties. Valence is more positive with lower spectral slopes, a greater emergence of strong partials, and an amplitude envelope with a sharper attack and earlier decay. Higher tension arousal is carried by brighter sounds

Composers often pick specific instruments to convey a given emotional tone in their music, partly due to their expressive possibilities, but also due to their timbres in specific registers and at given dynamic markings. Of interest to both music psychology and music informatics from a computational point of view is the relation between the acoustic properties that give rise to the timbre at a given pitch and the perceived emotional quality of the tone. Musician and nonmusician listeners were presented with 137 tones produced at a fixed dynamic marking (forte) playing tones at pitch class D# across each instrument's entire pitch range and with different playing techniques for standard orchestral instruments drawn from the brass, woodwind, string, and pitched percussion families. They rated each tone on six analogical-categorical scales in terms of emotional valence (positive/negative and pleasant/unpleasant), energy arousal (awake/tired), tension arousal (excited/calm), preference (like/dislike), and familiarity. Linear mixed models revealed interactive effects of musical training, instrument family, and pitch register, with non-linear relations between pitch register and several dependent variables. Twenty-three audio descriptors from the Timbre Toolbox were computed for each sound and analyzed in two ways: linear partial least squares regression (PLSR) and nonlinear artificial neural net modeling. These two analyses converged in terms of the importance of various spectral, temporal, and spectrotemporal audio descriptors in explaining the emotion ratings, but some differences also emerged. Different combinations of audio descriptors make major contributions to the three emotion dimensions, suggesting that they are carried by distinct acoustic properties. Valence is more positive with lower spectral slopes, a greater emergence of strong partials, and an amplitude envelope with a sharper attack and earlier decay. Higher tension arousal is carried by brighter sounds

A novel method using optical fiber parametric amplification and phase modulation is proposed in order to generate Nyquist pulses. Using parabolic pulses as a pump, we show theoretically that it is possible to generate Nyquist pulses. Furthermore, we show that by using a sinusoidal pump (pump intensity modulated by an RF tone), it is possible to obtain pulses with characteristics that are close to Nyquist limited pulses. We demonstrate experimentally the generation of bandwidth limited pulses with full width half maximum of 14 ps at 10 GHz repetition rate. We also discuss limitations of this method and means to overcome these limitations.

Impinging compressible jets may cause deafness and material fatigue due to immensely loud tonal noise. It is generally accepted that a feedback mechanism similar to the screech feedback loop is responsible for impinging tones. The close of the loop remained unclear. One hypothesis hold up in the literature explains the emanated sound with the direct interaction of vortices and the wall. Other explanations name the standoff shock oscillations as the origin of the tones. Using direct numerical simulations (DNS) we were able to identify the source mechanism for under-expanded impinging jets with a nozzle pressure ratio (NPR) of 2.15 and a plate distance of 5 diameters. We found two different types of interactions between vortices and shocks to be responsible for the generation of the impinging tones. They are not related to screech.

) listeners and the effect of musical training for pitch discrimination of complex tones with resolved and unresolved harmonics. Concerning the first topic, behavioral and modeling results in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) indicated that temporal envelope cues of complex tones...... for the individual pitch-discrimination abilities, the musically trained listeners still allocated lower processing effort than did the non-musicians to perform the task at the same performance level. This finding suggests an enhanced pitch representation along the auditory system in musicians, possibly as a result......Understanding how the human auditory system processes the physical properties of an acoustical stimulus to give rise to a pitch percept is a fascinating aspect of hearing research. Since most natural sounds are harmonic complex tones, this work focused on the nature of pitch-relevant cues...

Full Text Available Damage detection tests of inclined cables, steel pipes, spherical shells, and an actual cable-stayed bridge were conducted based on the proposed musical tone law method. The results show that the musical tone law method could be used in the damage detection of isotropic material structures with simple shape, like cables, pipes, plates, and shells. Having distinct spectral lines like a comb with a certain interval distribution rule is the main characteristic of the music tone law. Damage detection baseline could be established by quantizing the fitting relationship between modal orders and the corresponding frequency values. The main advantage of this method is that it could be used in the structural damage detection without vibration information of an intact structure as a reference.

Using both visual-visual and auditory-visual priming lexical decision tasks, this study investigated phonological processing in reading logographic Chinese. Compound words sharing segmental templates but differing in lexical tones were used as primes and targets while their relative frequency was manipulated. It was found that tone neighbours did not prime each other significantly and the SOA of 100 msec in visual-visual priming. When the SOA was increased to 357 msec, or when primes were presented auditorily, the processing of target words was significantly delayed by their tone neighbours. Larger inhibitory effects were observed for low frequency targets with high frequency primes. It was argued that although phonological information is automatically activated and this activation affects access to semantics in reading Chinese,phonological mediation is not the only or the main ~urce of constraints on semantic activation.

Language experience enhances discrimination of speech contrasts at a behavioral- perceptual level, as well as at a pre-attentive level, as indexed by event-related potential (ERP) mismatch negativity (MMN) responses. The enhanced sensitivity could be the result of changes in acoustic resolution and/or long-term memory representations of the relevant information in the auditory cortex. To examine these possibilities, we used a short (ca. 600 ms) vs. long (ca. 2,600 ms) interstimulus interval (ISI) in a passive, oddball discrimination task while obtaining ERPs. These ISI differences were used to test whether cross-linguistic differences in processing Mandarin lexical tone are a function of differences in acoustic resolution and/or differences in long-term memory representations. Bisyllabic nonword tokens that differed in lexical tone categories were presented using a passive listening multiple oddball paradigm. Behavioral discrimination and identification data were also collected. The ERP results revealed robust MMNs to both easy and difficult lexical tone differences for both groups at short ISIs. At long ISIs, there was either no change or an enhanced MMN amplitude for the Mandarin group, but reduced MMN amplitude for the English group. In addition, the Mandarin listeners showed a larger late negativity (LN) discriminative response than the English listeners for lexical tone contrasts in the long ISI condition. Mandarin speakers outperformed English speakers in the behavioral tasks, especially under the long ISI conditions with the more similar lexical tone pair. These results suggest that the acoustic correlates of lexical tone are fairly robust and easily discriminated at short ISIs, when the auditory sensory memory trace is strong. At longer ISIs beyond 2.5 s language-specific experience is necessary for robust discrimination.

Language experience enhances discrimination of speech contrasts at a behavioral- perceptual level, as well as at a pre-attentive level, as indexed by event-related potential (ERP) mismatch negativity (MMN) responses. The enhanced sensitivity could be the result of changes in acoustic resolution and/or long-term memory representations of the relevant information in the auditory cortex. To examine these possibilities, we used a short (ca. 600 ms) vs. long (ca. 2,600 ms) interstimulus interval (ISI) in a passive, oddball discrimination task while obtaining ERPs. These ISI differences were used to test whether cross-linguistic differences in processing Mandarin lexical tone are a function of differences in acoustic resolution and/or differences in long-term memory representations. Bisyllabic nonword tokens that differed in lexical tone categories were presented using a passive listening multiple oddball paradigm. Behavioral discrimination and identification data were also collected. The ERP results revealed robust MMNs to both easy and difficult lexical tone differences for both groups at short ISIs. At long ISIs, there was either no change or an enhanced MMN amplitude for the Mandarin group, but reduced MMN amplitude for the English group. In addition, the Mandarin listeners showed a larger late negativity (LN) discriminative response than the English listeners for lexical tone contrasts in the long ISI condition. Mandarin speakers outperformed English speakers in the behavioral tasks, especially under the long ISI conditions with the more similar lexical tone pair. These results suggest that the acoustic correlates of lexical tone are fairly robust and easily discriminated at short ISIs, when the auditory sensory memory trace is strong. At longer ISIs beyond 2.5 s language-specific experience is necessary for robust discrimination. PMID:28321179

Because of limited spectral resolution, Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant (CI) users have difficulty perceiving fundamental frequency (F0) cues that are important to lexical tone recognition. To improve Mandarin tone recognition in CI users, we implemented and evaluated a novel real-time algorithm (C-tone) to enhance the amplitude contour, which is strongly correlated with the F0 contour. The C-tone algorithm was implemented in clinical processors and evaluated in eight users of the Nurotron NSP-60 CI system. Subjects were given 2 weeks of experience with C-tone. Recognition of Chinese tones, monosyllables, and disyllables in quiet was measured with and without the C-tone algorithm. Subjective quality ratings were also obtained for C-tone. After 2 weeks of experience with C-tone, there were small but significant improvements in recognition of lexical tones, monosyllables, and disyllables (P C-tone were greater for disyllables than for monosyllables. Subjective quality ratings showed no strong preference for or against C-tone, except for perception of own voice, where C-tone was preferred. The real-time C-tone algorithm provided small but significant improvements for speech performance in quiet with no change in sound quality. Pre-processing algorithms to reduce noise and better real-time F0 extraction would improve the benefits of C-tone in complex listening environments. Chinese CI users' speech recognition in quiet can be significantly improved by modifying the amplitude contour to better resemble the F0 contour.

Duct losses have a significant effect on the efficiency of delivering space cooling to U.S. homes. This effect is especially dramatic during peak demand periods where half of the cooling equipment's output can be wasted. Improving the efficiency of a duct system can save energy, but can also allow for downsizing of cooling equipment without sacrificing comfort conditions. Comfort, and hence occupant acceptability, is determined not only by steady-state temperatures, but by how long it takes to pull down the temperature during cooling start-up, such as when the occupants come home on a hot summer afternoon. Thus the delivered tons of cooling at the register during start-up conditions are critical to customer acceptance of equipment downsizing strategies. We have developed a simulation technique which takes into account such things as weather, heat-transfer (including hot attic conditions), airflow, duct tightness, duct location and insulation, and cooling equipment performance to determine the net tons of cooling delivered to occupied space. Capacity at the register has been developed as an improvement over equipment tonnage as a system sizing measure. We use this concept to demonstrate that improved ducts and better system installation is as important as equipment size, with analysis of pull-down capability as a proxy for comfort. The simulations indicate that an improved system installation including tight ducts can eliminate the need for almost a ton of rated equipment capacity in a typical new 2,000 square foot house in Sacramento, California. Our results have also shown that a good duct system can reduce capacity requirements and still provide equivalent cooling at start-up and at peak conditions.

Lexical-tone languages use fundamental frequency (F0/pitch) to convey word meaning. About 41.8% of the world's languages use lexical tone (Maddieson, 2008), yet those systems are under-studied. I aim to increase our understanding of speech-sound inventory organization by extending to tone-systems a model of vowel-system organization, the Theory of Adaptive Dispersion (TAD) (Liljencrants and Lindblom, 1972). This is a cross-language investigation of whether and how the size of a tonal inventory affects (A) acoustic tone-space size and (B) dispersion of tone categories within the tone-space. I compared five languages with very different tone inventories: Cantonese (3 contour, 3 level tones); Mandarin (3 contour, 1 level tone); Thai (2 contour, 3 level tones); Yoruba (3 level tones only); and Igbo (2 level tones only). Six native speakers (3 female) of each language produced 18 CV syllables in isolation, with each of his/her language's tones, six times. I measured tonal F0 across the vowel at onset, midpoint, and offglide. Tone-space size was the F0 difference in semitones (ST) between each language's highest and lowest tones. Tone dispersion was the F0 distance (ST) between two tones shared by multiple languages. Following the TAD, I predicted that languages with larger tone inventories would have larger tone-spaces. Against expectations, tone-space size was fixed across level-tone languages at midpoint and offglide, and across contour-tone languages (except Thai) at offglide. However, within each language type (level-tone vs. contour-tone), languages with smaller tone inventories had larger tone spaces at onset. Tone-dispersion results were also unexpected. The Cantonese mid-level tone was further dispersed from a tonal baseline than the Yoruba mid-level tone; Cantonese mid-level tone dispersion was therefore greater than theoretically necessary. The Cantonese high-level tone was also further dispersed from baseline than the Mandarin high-level tone -- at midpoint

In the present paper, ToneInk, a prototype of a music based play scenario that investigates player collaboration, is introduced. ToneInk is an explorative sound environment that differs from the majority of music based games in that players can collaborate and be creative in the way they express...... mutual awareness, and in general were more passive when they needed to monitor a screen interface that supported the sound environment. Player collaboration was strongest when players negotiated rhythm, while the negotiation of melody was temporally offset and consisted of long individual explorations....

Full Text Available In this paper I shall discuss the representation of morphological tone in Hausa, as implemented in a computational grammar of the language, referred to as HaG, which has been developed within the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Based on an in-depth study of segmental and suprasegmental properties manipulated by morphological processes, I shall argue that two fundamental insights from Autosegmental Phonology needs to be seamlessly integrated into typed feature structure grammars of languages with grammatical tone, namely (i the systematic separation of tonal and metrical information from the string of consonants and vowels, and (ii the possibility of tonal spreading, i.e. the possibility for a tonal specification to be assigned to an arbitrary number of adjacent tone-bearing units (syllables. To this end, I present a formalisation of tonal melodies in terms of typed list constraints that implement a notion of tonal spreading, allowing for an underspecified description of tonal melodies, independent of the number of tone-bearing units. I shall finally show that this minimal encoding is sufficient and flexible enough to capture the range of suprasegmental phenomena in Hausa.

The morphological function of tone/accent is examined in a number of Cushitic languages, with the objective of determining whether any comparative statement can be made validly at the group level. Three languages, the Somali dialect cluster, Afar, and Oromo, are the basis for the study. Patterns in case, gender, and the jussive form are analyzed.…

Sensory consonance and dissonance are perceptual attributes of musical intervals conveying pleasant- ness, tension, and harmony in musical phrases. For complex-tone dyads, corresponding to two musical notes played simultaneously, consonance is known to vary with the ratio in fundamental frequency...... for a potential role of frequency selectivity for consonance perception of dyads, might not hold for chords...

This investigation is part of a test series that was extremely comprehensive and included aerodynamic and acoustic testing of a fan stage using two different fan rotors and three different stator designs. The test series is known as the Source Diagnostic Test (SDT) and was conducted by NASA Glenn as part of the Advanced Subsonic Technology (AST) Noise Reduction Program. Tone mode measurements of one of the rotors with three different stators were made. The stator designs involve changes in vane count and sweep at constant solidity. The results of both inlet and exhaust tone mode measurements are presented in terms of mode power for both circumferential and radial mode orders. The results show benefits of vane sweep to be large, up to 13 dB in total tone power. At many conditions, the increase in power due to cutting on the rotor/stator interaction is more than offset by vane sweep. The rotor locked mode is shown as an important contributor to tone power when the blade tip speed is near and above Mach one. This is most evident in the inlet when the direct rotor field starts to cut on.

Four experiments were conducted to investigate the interplay between context and tone of voice in the perception of sarcasm. These experiments emphasized the role of contrast effects in sarcasm perception exclusively by means of auditory stimuli whereas most past research has relied on written material. In all experiments, a positive or negative…

Results from the present event-related potentials (ERP) study show that tones on Swedish word stems can rapidly pre-activate upcoming suffixes, even when the word stem does not carry any lexical meaning. Results also show that listeners are able to rapidly restore suffixes which are replaced with a cough. Accuracy in restoring suffixes correlated…

of SPL or SL values was tested. Both tasks used two-interval forced-choice trials, with level “jitter” introduced by selecting the level of each tone from a normal distribution with specified mean level and standard deviation of 5 dB. Subjects were instructed to indicate which complex was louder......In a series of studies, 6 subjects with normal hearing (NH) and 3 with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) judged the overall loudness of 6-tone complexes comprised of octave frequencies from 0.25 to 8 kHz. In two tasks, tones were equated in level in dB SPL or in sensation level (SL) and a range....... In the “loudness” task there was no difference in mean level across the two intervals. In the “sample discrimination” task, the two complexes differed by an average of 5 dB. For both tasks, perceptual weights were derived by correlating the differences in level between matched-frequency tones in the complexes...

Pattern transfer is critical to any lithographic technology, and plays a significant role in defining the critical features in a device layer. As both the memory and logic roadmaps continue to advance, greater importance is placed on the scheme used to do the etching. For many critical layers, a need has developed which requires a multilayer stack to be defined in order to perform the pattern transfer. There are many cases however, where this standard approach does not provide the best results in terms of critical dimension (CD) fidelity and CD uniformity. As an example, when defining a contact pattern, it may be advantageous to apply a bright field mask (in order to maximize the normalized inverse log slope (NILS)) over the more conventional dark field mask. The result of applying the bright field mask in combination with positive imaging resist is to define an array of pillar patterns, which then must be converted back to holes before etching the underlying dielectric material. There have been several publications on tone reversal that is introduced in the resist process itself, but often an etch transfer process is applied to reverse the pattern tone. The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of a three layer reverse tone process (RTP) that is capable of reversing the tone of every printed feature type. The process utilizes a resist pattern, a hardmask layer and an additional protection layer. The three layer approach overcomes issues encountered when using a single masking layer. Successful tone reversal was demonstrated both on 300mm wafers and imprint masks, including the largest features in the pattern, with dimensions as great as 60 microns. Initial in-field CD uniformity is promising. CDs shifted by about 2.6nm and no change was observed in either LER or LWR. Follow-up work is required to statistically qualify in-field CDU and also understand both across wafer uniformity and feature linearity.

Noise characteristics of convergent-divergent (C-D) nozzles in the overexpanded regime are the focus of this paper. The flow regime is encountered during takeoff and landing of certain airplanes and also with rocket nozzles in launch-pad environment. Experimental results from laboratory-scale single nozzles are discussed. The flow often undergoes a resonance accompanied by emission of tones (referred to as transonic tones). The phenomenon is different from the well-known screech tones. Unlike screech, the frequency increases with increasing supply pressure. There is a staging behavior odd harmonic stages occur at lower pressures while the fundamental occurs in a range of relatively higher pressures. A striking feature is that tripping of the nozzle s internal boundary layer tends to suppress the resonance. However, even in the absence of tones the broadband levels are found to be high. That is, relative to a convergent case and at same pressure ratio, the C-D nozzles are found to be noisier, often by more than 10dB. This excess broadband noise (referred to as EBBN) is further explored. Its characteristics are found to be different from the well-known broadband shockassociated noise ( BBSN ). For example, while the frequency of the BBSN peak varies with observation angle no such variation is noted with EBBN. The mechanisms of the transonic tone and the EBBN are not completely understood yet. They appear to be due to unsteady shock motion inside the nozzle. The shock drives the flow downstream like a vibrating diaphragm, and resonance takes place similarly as with acoustic resonance of a conical section having one end closed and the other end open. When the boundary layer is tripped, apparently a breakdown of azimuthal coherence suppresses the resonance. However, there is still unsteady shock motion albeit with superimposed randomness. Such random motion of the internal shock and its interaction with the separated boundary layer produces the EBBN.

In this study, we examine the neural substrates underlying Tone 3 sandhi and tone sequencing in Mandarin Chinese using fMRI. Tone 3 sandhi is traditionally described as the substitution of Tone 3 with Tone 2 when followed by another Tone 3 (i.e., 33→23). According to current speech production models, target substitution is expected to engage the posterior inferior frontal gyrus. Since Tone 3 sandhi is, to some extent, independent of segments, which makes it more similar to singing, right-lateralized activation in this region was predicted. As for tone sequencing, based on studies in sequencing, we expected the involvement of the supplementary motor area. In the experiments, participants were asked to produce twelve four-syllable sequences with the same tone assignment (the repeated sequences) or a different tone assignment (the mixed sequences). We found right-lateralized posterior inferior frontal gyrus activation for the sequence 3333 (Tone 3 sandhi) and left-lateralized activation in the supplementary motor area for the mixed sequences (tone sequencing). We proposed that tones and segments could be processed in parallel in the left and right hemispheres, but their integration, or the product of their integration, is hosted in the left hemisphere.

Full Text Available In this study, we examine the neural substrates underlying Tone 3 sandhi and tone sequencing in Mandarin Chinese using fMRI. Tone 3 sandhi is traditionally described as the substitution of Tone 3 with Tone 2 when followed by another Tone 3 (i.e., 33→23. According to current speech production models, target substitution is expected to engage the posterior inferior frontal gyrus. Since Tone 3 sandhi is, to some extent, independent of segments, which makes it more similar to singing, right-lateralized activation in this region was predicted. As for tone sequencing, based on studies in sequencing, we expected the involvement of the supplementary motor area. In the experiments, participants were asked to produce twelve four-syllable sequences with the same tone assignment (the repeated sequences or a different tone assignment (the mixed sequences. We found right-lateralized posterior inferior frontal gyrus activation for the sequence 3333 (Tone 3 sandhi and left-lateralized activation in the supplementary motor area for the mixed sequences (tone sequencing. We proposed that tones and segments could be processed in parallel in the left and right hemispheres, but their integration, or the product of their integration, is hosted in the left hemisphere.

This study used the same methodology in Wong [J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 55, 1423-1437 (2012b)] to examine the perceived accuracy of monosyllabic Mandarin tones produced by 4- and 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children growing up in Taiwan and combined the findings with those of 3-year-olds reported in Wong [J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 55, 1423-1437 (2012b)] to track the development of monosyllabic tone production in preschool children. Tone productions of adults and children were collected in a picture naming task and low-pass filtered to remove lexical information and reserve tone information. Five native-speakers categorized the target tones in the filtered productions. Children's tone accuracy was compared to adults' to determine mastery and developmental changes. The results showed that preschool children in Taiwan have not fully mastered the production of monosyllabic Mandarin tones. None of the tones produced by the children in the three age groups reached adult-like accuracy. Little developmental change was found in children's tone accuracy during the preschool years. A similar order of accuracy of the tones was observed across the three age groups and the order appeared to follow the order of articulatory complexity in producing the tones. The findings suggest a protracted course of development in children's acquisition of Mandarin tones and that tone development may be constrained by physiological factors.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between stuttering loci and lexical tone in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers. Conversational samples from 20 Taiwanese children who stutter (CWS; M = 4:9; range = 3:2-6:4) were analysed for frequency and type of speech disfluency and lexical tone associated with stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs). Results indicated that SLDs were significantly more likely to be produced on Mandarin syllables carrying Tone 3 and Tone 4 syllables compared to syllables carrying either Tone 1 or Tone 2. Post-hoc analyses revealed: (1) no significant differences in the stuttering frequencies between Tone 1 and Tone 2, or between Tone 3 and Tone 4, and (2) a higher incidence of stuttering on syllables carrying Tone 3 and Tone 4 embedded in conflicting (as opposed to compatible) tonal contexts. Results suggest that the higher incidence of stuttering on Mandarin syllables carrying either Tone 3 or 4 may be attributed to the increased level of speech motor demand underlying rapid F0 change both within and across syllables.

To find the possible reasons for the midlevel elevation of the Weber fraction in intensity discrimination of a tone burst, a comparison was performed for the complementary distributions of spike activity of an ensemble of space nerves, such as the distribution of time instants when spikes occur, the distribution of interspike intervals, and the autocorrelation function. The distribution properties were detected in a poststimulus histogram, an interspike interval histogram, and an autocorrelation histogram—all obtained from the reaction of an ensemble of model space nerves in response to an auditory noise burst-useful tone burst complex. Two configurations were used: in the first, the peak amplitude of the tone burst was varied and the noise amplitude was fixed; in the other, the tone burst amplitude was fixed and the noise amplitude was varied. Noise could precede or follow the tone burst. The noise and tone burst durations, as well as the interval between them, was 4 kHz and corresponded to the characteristic frequencies of the model space nerves. The profiles of all the mentioned histograms had two maxima. The values and the positions of the maxima in the poststimulus histogram corresponded to the amplitudes and mutual time position of the noise and the tone burst. The maximum that occurred in response to the tone burst action could be a basis for the formation of the loudness of the latter (explicit loudness). However, the positions of the maxima in the other two histograms did not depend on the positions of tone bursts and noise in the combinations. The first maximum fell in short intervals and united intervals corresponding to the noise and tone burst durations. The second maximum fell in intervals corresponding to a tone burst delay with respect to noise, and its value was proportional to the noise amplitude or tone burst amplitude that was smaller in the complex. An increase in tone burst or noise amplitudes was caused by nonlinear variations in the two

In Greenwood [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 33, 484-502 (1961a)] the ratio of masked signal threshold to masker level (S/M) decreased about 4 dB at a masker level of about 50 dB SL, the 'transition' level, when noise bands were subcritical but not when supercritical. Schlauch et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 71, S73 (1982)] report a related result. A pilot study [Greenwood, Harvard Psychoacoustic Lab. Status Report 37, 8-9 (1961)] in which pure tones masked identical tones in-phase showed a larger change in S/M. Detailed tone-tone growth-of-masking curves from over a dozen subjects in 1967-69, and in 1960, are reported here. A transition in slope, of variable abruptness, often begins to occur at about 50 dB SL, dropping S/M ratio by 6 to 8 dB or more [Rabinowitz et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 35, 1053 (1976)]; the curves sometimes possess two segments, sometimes are simply convex. All have overall slopes less than 1.0, known also as the 'near miss'. Consistent with other results [Zwicker, Acustica 6, 365-396 (1956); Viemeister, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 51, 1265-1296 (1972); Moore and Raab, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 55, 1049-1060 (1974)], addition of low-level wide-band and high-pass noise was found to counteract the change in S/M, i.e., to raise the high-level section of the growth-of-masking curve. However, the ability of narrow 'band-pass' noise to exert this effect was greatest when added at a frequency ratio (band/masking-tone) of 1.3 to 1.5, which seems more closely to link the effects of added noise to the effects of increasing a masking band from sub- to supercritical width (above). Interpretation of the decrease in DL with level begins by noting that the 'transition' level correlates approximately with the level at which a primary unit population excited by a given pure tone begins rapidly to expand basally. Underlying this, the basalward shift of a tone's displacement envelope peak accelerates at about the same level [Rhode, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 49, 1218-1231 (1971); Sellick et al., J

Register theory is important in the study of linguistic.It is developed by Halliday who defined it as a variety of language according to use.According to Halliday,language is strained by three variables:field,tenor and mode,which are the three variables of register.Nowadays,more and more researchers are focusing on the application of register theory on specific English

The present study recorded both behavioral data and event-related brain potentials to examine the effectiveness of a perception-only training and a perception-plus-production training procedure on the intentional and unintentional perception of lexical tone by native English listeners. In the behavioral task, both the perception-only and the perception-plus-production groups improved on the tone discrimination abilities after the training session. Moreover, the participants in both groups generalized the improvements gained through the trained stimuli to the untrained stimuli. In the ERP task, the Mismatch Negativity was smaller in the post-training task than in the pre-training task. However, the two training groups did not differ in tone processing at the intentional or unintentional level after training. These results suggest that the employment of the motor system does not specifically benefit the tone perceptual skills. Furthermore, the present study investigated whether some tone pairs are more easily confused than others by native English listeners, and whether the order of tone presentation influences non-native tone discrimination. In the behavioral task, Tone2-Tone1 (rising-level) and Tone2-Tone4 (rising-falling) were the most difficult tone pairs, while Tone1-Tone2 and Tone4-Tone2 were the easiest tone pairs, even though they involved the same tone contrasts respectively. In the ERP task, the native English listeners had good discrimination when Tone2 and Tone4 were embedded in strings of Tone1, while poor discrimination when Tone1 was inserted in the context of Tone2 or Tone4. These asymmetries in tone perception might be attributed to the interference of native intonation system and can be altered by training.

This study examined skin tone dissatisfaction, measured using a skin tone chart, among a multiethnic sample of British adults. A total of 648 British White individuals, 292 British South Asians, and 260 British African Caribbean participants completed a visual task in which they were asked to indicate their actual and ideal skin tones. They also completed measures of body appreciation, self-esteem, and ethnic identity attachment. Results showed that Asians had a lighter skin tone ideal than White and African Caribbean participants. Conversely, White participants had higher skin tone dissatisfaction (preferring a darker skin tone) than Asian and African Caribbean participants, who preferred a lighter skin tone. Results also showed that skin tone dissatisfaction predicted body appreciation once the effects of participant ethnicity, age, ethnic identity attachment, and self-esteem had been accounted for. Implications of our findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

OBJECTIVES: To analyse completeness and validity of data in the Cerebral Palsy Register in Denmark, 1979-1982. METHODS: Completeness has been assessed by comparing data from The Danish National Patient Register (DNPR) with the cases included in the Cerebral Palsy Register (CPR). Agreement between......, but gestational age was subject to a systematic error, and urinary infections in pregnancy (kappa = 0.43) and placental abruption (kappa = 0.52) were seriously under-reported in the CPR. CONCLUSIONS: Completeness of the Cerebral Palsy Register in Denmark, 1979-1982, has been assessed to maximal 85%, emphasizing...

OBJECTIVES: To analyse completeness and validity of data in the Cerebral Palsy Register in Denmark, 1979-1982. METHODS: Completeness has been assessed by comparing data from The Danish National Patient Register (DNPR) with the cases included in the Cerebral Palsy Register (CPR). Agreement between......, but gestational age was subject to a systematic error, and urinary infections in pregnancy (kappa = 0.43) and placental abruption (kappa = 0.52) were seriously under-reported in the CPR. CONCLUSIONS: Completeness of the Cerebral Palsy Register in Denmark, 1979-1982, has been assessed to maximal 85%, emphasizing...

Full Text Available The features of using exercise to reduce muscle tone in children with cerebral palsy in training at a special school. The study involved children with cerebral palsy 7-10 years. Presents the results of evaluation of motor function and muscle tone. The efficacy of the use of physical rehabilitation for children with cerebral palsy, a positive effect of using special exercise in stretching the muscles with increased tone, improve motor function and normalization of muscle tone.

International audience; Previous work shows that listeners tend to perceive an illusory vowel inside consonant clusters that are illegal in their native language [1],[2]. But few studies have been concerned with the perception of tones in connection with L2 phonotactics, specifically for L1 speakers of tone languages. This study examines how L1 speakers of a tone language (Mandarin) perceive the clusters of an L2 language without tone (Russian). The issue that we address is how the perception...

Discusses the nature of pulse voltammetry, indicating that its widespread use arises from good sensitivity and detection limits and from ease of application and low cost. Provides analytical and mechanistic applications of the procedure. (JN)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an effective treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). During EMDR, patients make eye movements (EMs) while recalling traumatic memories, but recently therapists have replaced EMs by alternating beep tones. There are no outcome studies on the effects of tones. In an earlier analogue study, tones were inferior to EMs in the reduction of vividness of aversive memories. In a first EMDR session, 12 PTSD patients recalled trauma memories in three conditions: recall only, recall + tones, and recall + EMs. Three competing hypotheses were tested: 1) EMs are as effective as tones and better than recall only, 2) EMs are better than tones and tones are as effective as recall only, and 3) EMs are better than tones and tones are better than recall only. The order of conditions was balanced, each condition was delivered twice, and decline in memory vividness and emotionality served as outcome measures. The data strongly support hypothesis 2 and 3 over 1: EMs outperformed tones while it remained unclear if tones add to recall only. The findings add to earlier considerations and earlier analogue findings suggesting that EMs are superior to tones and that replacing the former by the latter was premature.

Learning the Chinese tone system is a major challenge to students of Chinese as a second or foreign language. Part of the problem is that the spoken Chinese syllable presents a complex perceptual input that overlaps tone with segments. This complexity can be addressed through directing attention to the critical features of a component (tone in…

Measured vagal tone and heart period at 2 months and 5 years in children and their mothers to evaluate the development of vagal regulation at rest and during an environmental task. Found that children reached adult levels of baseline vagal tone by 5 years and did not differ from mothers in baseline-to-task change in vagal tone or heart period.…

The perception of lexical tones is addressed through research on South Kyungsang Korean, spoken in the southeastern part of Korea. Based on an earlier production study (Chang, 2008a, 2008b), a categorization experiment was conducted to determine the perceptually salient aspects of the perceptual nature of a high tone and a rising tone. The…

The present study investigated 3-year-old children's perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones in monosyllabic words. Thirteen 3-year-old, Mandarin-speaking children participated in the study. Tone perception was examined by a picture-pointing task, and tone production was investigated by picture naming. To compare children's productions…

To learn words, infants must be sensitive to native phonological contrast. While lexical tone predominates as a source of phonemic contrast in human languages, there has been little investigation of the influences of lexical tone on word learning. The present study investigates infants' sensitivity to tone mispronunciations in two groups of…

A method for online dispersion monitoring by adding a single in-band subcarrier tone is introduced. According to the theoretical analysis, the dispersion monitor and measurement range are determined by the specific frequency of the subcarrier tone. By using simulation tools, figures about relationship between power of subcarrier tone and transmission distance in ideal condition are shown.

This study investigates whether native Hmong speakers' first language (L1) lexical tone experience facilitates or interferes with their perception of Mandarin tones and whether training is effective for perceptual learning of second (L2) tones. In Experiment 1, 3 groups of beginning level learners of Mandarin with different L1 prosodic background…

This annotated bibliography, which has been entered into the SOLAR Bibliography File, focuses on the phonetics and phonology of tone, including studies on the physiology of phonation and pitch control, pitch perception, inherent pitch of vowels, the interaction of tone with musical melody in tone languages, and other related issues. An attempt has…

Investigated the role of physiological self-regulation (cardiac vagal tone) in information processing (habituation) in infants. Found that decreases in vagal tone consistently related to habituation efficiency at 2 and 5 months. Within- and between- age suppression of vagal tone predicted accumulated looking time (ALT), but ALT did not predict…

A new scheme is described for the generation of pulsed squeezed light by use of femtosecond pulses that have been parametrically deamplified through a single pass in a thin (100-microm) potassium niobate crystal with a significant deamplification of approximately -3 dB. The quantum noise of each pulse is registered in the time domain by single-shot homodyne detection operated with femtosecond pulses; the best squeezed quadrature variance was 1.87 dB below the shot-noise level. Such a scheme provides a basic resource for time-resolved quantum communication protocols.

A new scheme is described for pulsed squeezed light generation using femtosecond pulses parametrically deamplified through a single pass in a thin (0.1mm) potassium niobate KNbO3 crystal, with a significant deamplification of about -3dB. The quantum noise of each individual pulse is registered in the time domain using a single-shot homodyne detection operated with femtosecond pulses and the best squeezed quadrature variance was measured to be 1.87 dB below the shot noise level. Such a scheme provides the basic ressource for time-resolved quantum communication protocols.

The dynamic properties of excitation and two-tone inhibition in the cochlear nucleus were studied from extracellularly recorded unit responses to two simultaneously presented tones. One tone was presented at the unit's characteristic frequency, CF, the other at the unit's best inhibitory frequency, BIF. One or both of the tones were amplitude-modulated with pseudorandom noise. The system under study is in general nonlinear, but can be considered to function as a linear system for small changes in sound intensity around a certain operating point. The dynamic properties are likely to be different at different operating points. A suitable method for the study of dynamic properties of such a system employs tones that are amplitude-modulated with pseudorandom noise. In the present study, the dynamic properties were assessed by cross-correlating the unit discharge rate with the modulation. This was accomplished by computing the cross-covariance function between a period of noise and a period histogram of the discharges, the histogram being locked to the periodicity of the pseudorandom noise. In this way, it has been shown in previous works (Moller, 1973, 1974b), that the cross-covariance function is a valid approximation of the system's impulse response function at a certain sound intensity, provided the modulation is kept at a low value. In the present study the computed cross-covariance function is thus an approximation of the change in discharge rate of the cochlear nucleus units in response to a brief increase in stimulus intensity. As the response of the system under the given circumstances is approximately that of a linear system, the integrated cross-covariance is an approximation of the system's step response function, i.e the change in discharge rate that resulte from a hypothetical step increase in stimulus intensity. The results of the present study can be summarized as follows: 1. The impulse and step response functions computed from the responses to the

, specifically those showing enhanced pitch cues (i.e., musicians) and those typically having disrupted pitch cues (i.e., hearing-impaired listeners). In particular, two main topics were addressed: the relative importance of resolved and unresolved harmonics for normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI......) listeners and the effect of musical training for pitch discrimination of complex tones with resolved and unresolved harmonics. Concerning the first topic, behavioral and modeling results in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) indicated that temporal envelope cues of complex tones...... discrimination to that of NH listeners. In the second part of this work, behavioral and objective measures of pitch discrimination were carried out in musicians and non-musicians. Musicians showed an increased pitch-discrimination performance relative to non-musicians for both resolved and unresolved harmonics...

Thresholds were measured for detecting sinusoidal amplitude modulation in the presence of a complex-tone masker modulation. Both modulations were applied to the same sinusoidal carrier. Two different masker modulations were used: (i) a pair of components beating at the difference frequency and (ii......) a three-tone complex producing a sinusoidal amplitude modulation of the modulation depth at the difference frequency between adjacent components. Both maskers show a periodicity in the waveform that is not contained in the envelope spectrum itself but can be observed when the envelope of the envelope......, referred to as the "venelope" [Ewert et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112. 2921-2931 (2002)], is calculated. For a signal frequency equal to the masker-venelope periodicity, modulation depth at threshold was measured as a function of the signal phase relative to the phase of the masker-venelope component...

In 1875 registration of causes of death in Denmark was established by the National Board of Health, and annual statistics of death have since been published. Until 1970 the national statistics were based upon punched cards with data collected from the death certificates. Since then the register h......, and the research based upon the registers, presenting some examples of research activities....

Maternal restrictive feeding behaviors have been associated with child weight status. The affective tone of mothers' statements intended to restrict their children's eating has not been examined. The objectives of this study were to describe the affective tone of mothers' restrictive feeding behaviors (positive or negative), and to test the association of child and mother characteristics with rates of Restriction with Positive Affect, Restriction with Negative Affect and Total Restriction. A total of 237 low-income child-mother dyads (mean child age 5.9 years) participated in a videotaped standardized laboratory eating protocol, during which mothers and children were both presented with large servings of cupcakes. A coding scheme was developed to count each restrictive statement with a positive affective tone and each restrictive statement with a negative affective tone. To establish reliability, 20% of videos were double-coded. Demographics and anthropometrics were obtained. Poisson regression models were used to test the association between characteristics of the child and mother with counts of Restriction with Positive Affect, Restriction with Negative Affect, and Total Restriction. Higher rates of Restriction with Positive Affect and Total Restriction were predicted by child obese weight status, and mother non-Hispanic white race/ethnicity. Higher rates of Restriction with Negative Affect were predicted by older child age, child obese weight status, mother non-Hispanic white race/ethnicity, and lower mother education level. In conclusion, in this study mothers of obese (vs. non-obese) children had higher rates of restriction in general, but particularly higher rates of Restriction with Negative Affect. Rather than being told not to restrict, mothers may need guidance on how to sensitively restrict their child's intake. Future studies should consider the contributions of maternal affect to children's responses to maternal restriction.

We present herein an original approach for the watermarking of holograms in gray tone images for use in microscopic halftone image archiving. Our concept is based on the principle of complementary holography presented in a previous contribution. The efficiency of the concept is evaluated theoretically and experimentally. We demonstrate the interest of elliptical diffraction patterns as an alternative to the usual rectangular diffraction patterns and confirm the subsidiary role of the hologram amplitude in the hologram recovery process.

The absence of timbre and Musical structure, as well as the short-duration of the tones in the current experiment certainly contribute to the absence...contextual constraints top-down processing 20. ABSTRACT (Continua a evee side Of nooeceep muW Identify S b eaki nobo) ---->Six musically and six non- musically ...patterns in the structured condition were arranged to reflect structural rules. Musical training made no difference, but magnitude of the frequency

Full Text Available A variety of noises have been employed for decades in an effort to facilitate habituation, mask, or suppress tinnitus. Many of these sounds have reportedly provided benefit, but success has not been universal. More recently, musical stimuli have been added as a sound therapy component. The potential advantages of using such stimuli, in particular fractal tones, in combination with amplification are discussed in this paper.

Full Text Available This research investigated the effect of a five stage study program applied by the researcher to one student who had entered university playing the flute, but who had not resolved lip and tone problems in one educational semester through basic long sound studies and scale studies. The participant in the research was a 19 year old student who had completed first year of the music teaching program and had performed in the year-end concert; however she was criticized by listeners and flute teachers for forced and scratchy tone. The research had the basic aim of solving these problems. As a result the “single subject study model”, chosen for research on individuals requesting private training, was chosen for this research model. The findings of the study were collected as video recordings of scale, study and piece work in initial, training and final stages of a six-week education course run every day. To evaluate the obtained recordings, a “Behavior for Quality Flute Tone Scale” was created. The video recordings were investigated by three flute teaching staff, expert in the area, who provided points in accordance with the scale. The obtained points were analyzed using the SPSS 15.0 program. The results showed that the study program created by the researcher provided rapid tonal development of the student. It is considered that the study is important to present an alternative route for flute students experiencing similar problems.

Full Text Available This article discusses an approach to teaching linear improvisation to beginning jazz guitarists through the function of voice leading in harmonic progressions. The student may gain a clear understanding of improvising melodies by establishing clear visual and aural relationships between the chordal and melodic textures. Three dominant 7th chord voicings are introduced and applied to a twelve bar blues progression in F major. After learning the rhythm guitar accompaniment, single note guide tones consisting of the flat 7th and 3rd chord tones of each dominant seventh chord are extracted from the chord voicings and applied in a melodic texture following chromatic voice leading principles within the harmonic progression. Musicality within the exercises is increased by the addition of a series of rhythmic variations that are applied to the guide-tone lines. Continuing with the concept, full dominant seventh arpeggios are introduced in order to expand the available note choices as a way to build a solid foundation for improvising within harmonic progressions prior to using diatonic scales.

a comprehensive data material, often in the form of time series, which is very useful in health economic analyses. The disadvantage of register-based data is the use of tariffs, charges, or market prices as proxies for costs in the computation of healthcare costs.......Introduction: The aim of this paper is to provide an overview and a few examples of how national registers are used in analyses of healthcare costs in Denmark. Research topics: The paper focuses on health economic analyses based on register data. For the sake of simplicity, the studies are divided...... into three main categories: economic evaluations of healthcare interventions, cost-of-illness analyses, and other analyses such as assessments of healthcare productivity. Conclusion: We examined a number of studies using register-based data on healthcare costs. Use of register-based data renders...

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for moving the interconnect protocol configuration registers into the main memory space of a node. The region of memory used for storing the interconnect protocol configuration registers may also be made cacheable to reduce the latency of accesses to the interconnect protocol configuration registers. Interconnect protocol configuration registers which are used during a startup routine may be prefetched into the host's cache to make the startup routine more efficient. The interconnect protocol configuration registers for various interconnect protocols may include one or more of device capability tables, memory-side statistics (e.g., to support two-level memory data mapping decisions), advanced memory and interconnect features such as repair resources and routing tables, prefetching hints, error correcting code (ECC) bits, lists of device capabilities, set and store base address, capability, device ID, status, configuration, capabilities, and other settings.

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for moving the interconnect protocol configuration registers into the main memory space of a node. The region of memory used for storing the interconnect protocol configuration registers may also be made cacheable to reduce the latency of accesses to the interconnect protocol configuration registers. Interconnect protocol configuration registers which are used during a startup routine may be prefetched into the host's cache to make the startup routine more efficient. The interconnect protocol configuration registers for various interconnect protocols may include one or more of device capability tables, memory-side statistics (e.g., to support two-level memory data mapping decisions), advanced memory and interconnect features such as repair resources and routing tables, prefetching hints, error correcting code (ECC) bits, lists of device capabilities, set and store base address, capability, device ID, status, configuration, capabilities, and other settings.

Recently, register theory has been largely adopted in translation studies. It can better avoid subjective factors in transla-tion in perspective of register. It can also evaluate“faithfulness”of translated text in a rigorous way. In the paper, register theory is introduced to political discourse translation. In Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, he defines“register”as the context of sit-uation. And there are three variables of register, respectively, field, tenor and mode. Field means what is taking place in the dis-course. By tenor, it refers to who is taking part in the discourse, i.e. participant. As for mode of discourse, it means what the lan-guage will do for the participants in the context of situation. The paper aims to discuss the guiding role that register theory has to political discourse translation practice through field, tenor and mode.

The Nordic (Scandinavian) countries have had working arthroplasty registers for several years. However, the small numbers of inhabitants and the conformity within each country with respect to preferred prosthesis brands and techniques have limited register research....

Full Text Available Previous research suggests that within Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics, only a subgroup has behavioral lexical tone perception impairments (tone agnosia, whereas the rest of amusics do not. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the categorical nature of lexical tone perception in Mandarin-speaking amusics with and without behavioral lexical tone deficits. Three groups of listeners (controls, pure amusics and amusics with tone agnosia participated in tone identification and discrimination tasks. Indexes of the categorical perception of a physical continuum of fundamental frequencies ranging from a rising to level tone were measured. Specifically, the stimulus durations were manipulated at 100 and 200 ms. For both stimulus durations, all groups exhibited similar categorical boundaries. The pure amusics showed sharp identification slopes and significantly peaked discrimination functions similar to those of normal controls. However, such essential characteristics for the categorical perception of lexical tones were not observed in amusics with tone agnosia. An enlarged step-size from 20 Hz to 35 Hz was not able to produce any discrimination peaks in tone agnosics either. The current study revealed that only amusics with tone agnosia showed a lack of categorical tone perception, while the pure amusics demonstrated typical categorical perception of lexical tones, indicating that the deficit of pitch processing in music does not necessarily result in the deficit in the categorical perception of lexical tones. The different performance between congenital amusics with and without tone agnosia provides a new perspective on the proposition of the relationship between music and speech perception.

We investigated music and language processing in a group of early bilinguals who spoke a tone language and a non-tone language (Cantonese and Dutch). We assessed online speech-music processing interactions, that is, interactions that occur when speech and music are processed simultaneously in songs, with a speeded classification task. In this task, participants judged sung pseudowords either musically (based on the direction of the musical interval) or phonologically (based on the identity of the sung vowel). We also assessed longer-term effects of linguistic experience on musical ability, that is, the influence of extensive prior experience with language when processing music. These effects were assessed with a task in which participants had to learn to identify musical intervals and with four pitch-perception tasks. Our hypothesis was that due to their experience in two different languages using lexical versus intonational tone, the early Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals would outperform the Dutch control participants. In online processing, the Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals processed speech and music more holistically than controls. This effect seems to be driven by experience with a tone language, in which integration of segmental and pitch information is fundamental. Regarding longer-term effects of linguistic experience, we found no evidence for a bilingual advantage in either the music-interval learning task or the pitch-perception tasks. Together, these results suggest that being a Cantonese-Dutch bilingual does not have any measurable longer-term effects on pitch and music processing, but does have consequences for how speech and music are processed jointly. PMID:26659377

Full Text Available We investigated music and language processing in a group of early bilinguals who spoke a tone language and a non-tone language (Cantonese and Dutch. We assessed online speech-music processing interactions, that is, interactions that occur when speech and music are processed simultaneously in songs, with a speeded classification task. In this task, participants judged sung pseudowords either musically (based on the direction of the musical interval or phonologically (based on the identity of the sung vowel. We also assessed longer-term effects of linguistic experience on musical ability, that is, the influence of extensive prior experience with language when processing music. These effects were assessed with a task in which participants had to learn to identify musical intervals and with four pitch-perception tasks. Our hypothesis was that due to their experience in two different languages using lexical versus intonational tone, the early Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals would outperform the Dutch control participants. In online processing, the Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals processed speech and music more holistically than controls. This effect seems to be driven by experience with a tone language, in which integration of segmental and pitch information is fundamental. Regarding longer-term effects of linguistic experience, we found no evidence for a bilingual advantage in either the music-interval learning task or the pitch-perception tasks. Together, these results suggest that being a Cantonese-Dutch bilingual does not have any measurable longer-term effects on pitch and music processing, but does have consequences for how speech and music are processed jointly.

We investigated music and language processing in a group of early bilinguals who spoke a tone language and a non-tone language (Cantonese and Dutch). We assessed online speech-music processing interactions, that is, interactions that occur when speech and music are processed simultaneously in songs, with a speeded classification task. In this task, participants judged sung pseudowords either musically (based on the direction of the musical interval) or phonologically (based on the identity of the sung vowel). We also assessed longer-term effects of linguistic experience on musical ability, that is, the influence of extensive prior experience with language when processing music. These effects were assessed with a task in which participants had to learn to identify musical intervals and with four pitch-perception tasks. Our hypothesis was that due to their experience in two different languages using lexical versus intonational tone, the early Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals would outperform the Dutch control participants. In online processing, the Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals processed speech and music more holistically than controls. This effect seems to be driven by experience with a tone language, in which integration of segmental and pitch information is fundamental. Regarding longer-term effects of linguistic experience, we found no evidence for a bilingual advantage in either the music-interval learning task or the pitch-perception tasks. Together, these results suggest that being a Cantonese-Dutch bilingual does not have any measurable longer-term effects on pitch and music processing, but does have consequences for how speech and music are processed jointly.

Design and application of pulse information acquisition and analysis system with dynamic ... Log in or Register to get access to full text downloads. ... Methods: To use some flexible sensors to catch the radial artery pressure pulse wave and utilize ... and dynamic recognition, and it was applied to serve for ten healthy adults.

Three naming aloud experiments and a lexical decision (LD) experiment used masked priming to index the processing of written Thai vowels and tones. Thai allows for manipulation of the mapping between orthography and phonology not possible in other orthographies, for example, the use of consonants, vowels and tone markers in both horizontal and vertical orthographic positions (HOPs and VOPs). Experiment I showed that changing a vowel between prime and target slowed down target naming but changing a tone mark did not. Experiment I used an across item-design and a different number of HOPs in the way vowels and tones were specified. Experiment 2 used a within-item design and tested vowel and tone changes for both 2-HOP and 3-HOP targets separately. The 3-HOP words showed the same tone and vowel change effect as Experiment 1, whereas 2-HOP items did not. It was speculated that the 2-HOP result was due to the variable position of the vowel affecting priming. Experiment 3 employed a more stringent control over the 2-HOP vowel and tone items and found priming for the tone changes but not for vowel changes. The final experiment retested the items from Experiment 3 with the LD task and found no priming for the tone change items, indicating that the tone effect in Experiment 3 was due to processes involved in naming aloud. In all, the results supported the view that for naming a word, the development of tone information is slower than vowel information.

This study determined whether facilitation of auditory stream segregation could occur when facilitating context tones are accompanied by other sounds. Facilitation was measured as the likelihood of a repeated context tone that could match the low (A) or high (B) frequency of a repeating ABA test to increase the likelihood of hearing the test as segregated. We observed this type of facilitation when matching tones were alone, or with simultaneous bandpass noises or continuous speech, neither of which masked the tones. However, participants showed no streaming facilitation when a harmonic complex masked the context tones. Mistuning or desynchronizing the context tone relative to the rest of the complex did not facilitate streaming, despite the fact that the context tone was accessible to awareness and attention. Even presenting the context tone in a separate ear from the rest of the harmonic complex did not facilitate streaming, ruling out peripheral interference. Presenting the test as mistuned or desynchronized tones relative to complex tones eliminated the possibility that timbre changes from context to test interfered with facilitation resulting from the context. These results demonstrate the fragility of streaming facilitation and show that awareness of and attention to the context tones are not sufficient to overcome interference.

Past evidence has documented that attitudes toward marriage and cohabitation are related to sexual behavior in adolescence and young adulthood. This study extends prior research by longitudinally testing these associations across racial/ethnic groups and investigating whether culturally relevant variations within racial/ethnic minority groups, such as skin tone (i.e., lightness/darkness of skin color), are linked to attitudes toward marriage and cohabitation and sex. Drawing on family and public health literatures and theories, as well as burgeoning skin tone literature, it was hypothesized that more positive attitudes toward marriage and negative attitudes toward cohabitation would be associated with less risky sex, and that links differed for lighter and darker skin individuals. The sample included 6872 respondents (49.6 % female; 70.0 % White; 15.8 % African American; 3.3 % Asian; 10.9 % Hispanic) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. The results revealed that marital attitudes had a significantly stronger dampening effect on risky sexual behavior of lighter skin African Americans and Asians compared with their darker skin counterparts. Skin tone also directly predicted number of partners and concurrent partners among African American males and Asian females. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings for adolescence and young adulthood.

The electrodeposition of metals using pulsed current has achieved practical importance in recent years. Although it has long been known that changes in potential, with or without polarity reversal, can significantly affect the deposition process, the practical application of this has been slow to be adopted. This can largely be explained in terms of the complex relationship between the current regime and its effect on the electrodeposition process. In order to harness these effects, an understanding of the anodic and cathodic electrochemical processes is necessary, together with the effects of polarity reversal and the rate of such reversals. In this new monograph, the basics of metal electrodeposition from solution are laid out in great detail in seven distinct chapters. With this knowledge, the reader is able to predict how a given pulse train profile can be adopted to achieve a desired outcome. Equally important is the choice of a suitable rectifier and the ancillary control circuits to enable pulse platin...

We propose a standard model for a novel data access tier - registered access - to facilitate access to data that cannot be published in open access archives owing to ethical and legal risk. Based on an analysis of applicable research ethics and other legal and administrative frameworks, we discuss the general characteristics of this Registered Access Model, which would comprise a three-stage approval process: Authentication, Attestation and Authorization. We are piloting registered access with the Demonstration Projects of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health for which it may provide a suitable mechanism for access to certain data types and to different types of data users.

Introduction: The aim of this paper is to provide an overview and a few examples of how national registers are used in analyses of healthcare costs in Denmark. Research topics: The paper focuses on health economic analyses based on register data. For the sake of simplicity, the studies are divide...... a comprehensive data material, often in the form of time series, which is very useful in health economic analyses. The disadvantage of register-based data is the use of tariffs, charges, or market prices as proxies for costs in the computation of healthcare costs....

AIM OF THE DATABASE: The Danish Multiple Sclerosis Treatment Register (DMSTR) serves as a clinical quality register, enabling the health authorities to monitor the quality of the disease-modifying treatment, and it is an important data source for epidemiological research. STUDY POPULATION......: The DMSTR includes all patients with multiple sclerosis who had been treated with disease-modifying drugs since 1996. At present, more than 8,400 patients have been registered in this database. Data are continuously entered online into a central database from all sites in Denmark at start and at regular...

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited The performance of coherent and noncoherent RAKE receivers over a fading channel in the presence of pulse-noise interference and additive white Gaussian noise is analyzed. Coherent RAKE receivers require a pilot tone for coherent demodulation. Using a first order phase-lock-loop to recover a pilot tone with additive white Gaussian noise causes phase distortions at the phase-lock-loop output, which produce an irreducible phase noise err...

Introduction: The use of the unique personal identification number in the Nordic database systems enables the researchers to link the registers at the individual level. The registers can be used for both defining specific patient populations and to identify later events during follow-up. This rev...... the hospitalisation rate and treatment of cardiovascular disease. The risk of unmeasured factors affecting the results calls for cautious interpretation of the results.......-up. This review gives three examples within cardiovascular epidemiology to illustrate the use of the national administrative registers available to all researchers upon request. Research topics: The hospitalisation rate of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) was expected to be increased and case-fatality rate......-based treatment increased significantly over time and adherence to treatment was high. Finally, use of specific nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs by healthy subjects was associated with a dose-dependent increase in cardiovascular risk. CONCLUSION: The nationwide registers have proven very useful in monitoring...

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — The National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN) Download makes data from the survey readily available to users in a one-stop download. The Survey has been...

It is the substitution of an agreeable expression for one that may offend something unpleasant. Euphemisms have a close relationship with context, especially tenor of discourse. This paper attempts to analyze the variation of euphemisms guided by register theory.

The term sublanguage from mathematical linguistics confuses interaction researchers and leads them to believe that implementing natural language interfaces is easier than it is. The term register from sociolinguistics is proposed instead.

Modern physiologically based binaural models employ internal delay lines in the pathways from left and right peripheries to central processing nuclei. Various models apply the delay lines differently, and give different predictions for the detection of dichotic pitches, wherein listeners hear a virtual tone in the noise background. Two dichotic pitch stimuli (Huggins pitch and binaural coherence edge pitch) with low boundary frequencies were used to test the predictions by two different models. The results from five experiments show that the relative dichotic pitch strengths support the equalization-cancellation model and disfavor the central activity pattern (CAP) model. The CAP model makes predictions for the lateralization of Huggins pitch based on interaural time differences (ITD). By measuring human lateralization for Huggins pitches with two different types of phase boundaries (linear-phase and stepped phase), and by comparing with lateralization of sine-tones, it was shown that the lateralization of Huggins pitch stimuli is similar to that of the corresponding sine-tones, and the lateralizations of Huggins pitch stimuli with the two different boundaries were even more similar to one another. The results agreed roughly with the CAP model predictions. Agreement was significantly improved by incorporating individualized scale factors and offsets into the model, and was further unproved with a model including compression at large ITDs. Furthermore, ambiguous stimuli, with an interaural phase difference of 180 degrees, were consistently lateralized on the left or right based on individual asymmetries---which introduces the concept of "earedness". Interaural phase difference (IPD) and interaural time difference (ITD) are two different forms of temporal cues. With varying frequency, an auditory system based on IPD or ITD gives different quantitative predictions on lateralization. A lateralization experiment with sine tones tested whether human auditory system is an

The article focuses on the registration history and legal acts of Lithuanian cultural heritage and examines the register of estate cultural heritage and conditions for including estate cultural heritage into the register. The article also looks at the criteria of evaluating estate cultural heritage such as age limit, authentication features and the level of significance (national, regional, local). The paper presents information on the criteria applied for assessing heritage list in the Unite...

Full Text Available The problem discussed in the article is topical due to the interest of scientists to different types of language variations and especially registers or situational dialects treated by M.A.K. Halliday as use-related varieties of language or varieties used in a particular social setting. As discourse categorization is a very complex problem scholarly consensus has not been reached for the definitions of the term «register». The universal criteria for defining and discriminating registers have not been worked out either. The authors of the article give the review of scientific works devoted to the problem in question especially works by M.A.K. Halliday, R. Quirk, M. Joos, D. Hymes P. Trudgill, E.I. Belyaeva and others and analyze different definitions of the term «register», spectrums of registers and criteria for their discriminating. It enables the authors to come to the conclusion that only registers with the same field (religious, political, business etc. and mode (oral/written, dialogue/monologue can be compared. The difference lies in the sphere of tenor which depends on the degree of formality, distance of power and socio-psychological distance between speakers. The authors believe that it is also necessary to take into account the cooperative/ uncooperative character of conversation and para-verbal and non-verbal components of the speech situation. With this in mind they offer their definition of the register and describe main characteristics of registers in the sphere of oral communication.

Register allocation has long been formulated as a graph coloring problem, coloring the conflict graph with physical registers. Such a formulation does not fully capture the goal of the allocation, which is to minimize the traffic between registers and memory. Linear scan has been proposed as an alternative to graph coloring, but in essence, it can be viewed as a greedy algorithm for graph coloring: coloring the vertices not in the order of their degrees, but in the order of their occurence in the program. Thus it suffers from almost the same constraints as graph coloring. In this article, I propose a new method of register allocation based on the ideas of model transformer semantics (MTS) and static cache replacement (SCR). Model transformer semantics captures the semantics of registers and the stack. Static cache replacement relaxes the assumptions made by graph coloring and linear scan, aiming directly at reducing register-memory traffic. The method explores a much larger solution space than that of graph c...

We establish an isoperimetric inequality for the fundamental tone (first nonzero eigenvalue) of the free plate of a given area, proving the ball is maximal. Given $\\tau>0$, the free plate eigenvalues $\\omega$ and eigenfunctions $u$ are determined by the equation $\\Delta\\Delta u-\\tau\\Delta u = \\omega u$ together with certain natural boundary conditions. The boundary conditions are complicated but arise naturally from the plate Rayleigh quotient, which contains a Hessian squared term $|D^2u|^2$. We adapt Weinberger's method from the corresponding free membrane problem, taking the fundamental modes of the unit ball as trial functions. These solutions are a linear combination of Bessel and modified Bessel functions.

We establish an isoperimetric inequality for the fundamental tone (first nonzero eigenvalue) of the free plate of a given area, proving the ball is maximal. Given $\\tau>0$, the free plate eigenvalues $\\omega$ and eigenfunctions $u$ are determined by the equation $\\Delta\\Delta u-\\tau\\Delta u = \\omega u$ together with certain natural boundary conditions. The boundary conditions are complicated but arise naturally from the plate Rayleigh quotient, which contains a Hessian squared term $|D^2u|^2$. We adapt Weinberger's method from the corresponding free membrane problem, taking the fundamental modes of the unit ball as trial functions. These solutions are a linear combination of Bessel and modified Bessel functions.

The high volume manufacturing with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is delaying due to its light source issue. Therefore, ArF-immersion lithography has still been the most promising technology for down scaling of device pitch. As the limitation of ArF-immersion single patterning is considered to be nearly 40nm half pitch (hp), ArF-immersion lithography has necessity to be extended by combining processes to achieve sub- 20nm hp patterning. Recently, there are many reports about the extension of ArF-immersion lithography, e.g., self-aligned multiple patterning (SAMP) and litho-etch-litho-etch (LELE) process. These methods have been realized by the combination of lithography, deposition, and etching. On the other aspect, 1-D layout is adopted for leading devices, which contains additional cut or block litho and etch processes to form 2-D like layout. Thus, according to the progress of down scaling technologies, number of processes increases and the cost of ownership (CoO) can not be neglected. Especially, the number of lithography steps and etching steps has been expanded by the combination of processes, and it has come to occupy a large portion of total manufacturing cost. We have reported that negative tone development (NTD) system using organic solvent developer have enough resolution to achieve fine narrow trench or contact hole patterning, since negative tone imaging enables to apply bright mask for these pattern with significantly high optical image contrast compared to positive tone imaging, and it has contributed high throughput multiple patterning. On the other hand, NTD system is found to be useful not only for leading device node, but also for cost effective process. In this report, we propose the cost effective process using NTD application. In the viewpoint of cost down at exposure tool, we have developed KrF-NTD resist which is customized for organic solvent developer. Our KrF-NTD resist has resolution comparable with ArF positive tone development

Full Text Available Surveillance place a pivotal role in addressing a wide range of security challenges .In the present paper we propose a Dual Tone Multiple Frequency ( DTMF based Robot with video surveillance. In the proposed model a DTMF based Robot with video surveillance with multiple key functions, Arm picker and security system was implemented. Master and slave concept using 3 Microcontroller and motor driver IC to drive motors was implemented and belt wheel platform was used to move the robot from one place to another. Multiple key functions were used to perform more functions and a camera for surveillance .The robot can navigate with the help of the user.

This study investigated the Cantonese tone production ability of children with hearing impairment studying in mainstream schools. The participants were 87 Cantonese-speaking children with mild-to-profound degrees of hearing loss aged 5.92-13.58 in Hong Kong. Most of the children were fitted with hearing aids (n = 65); 17 of them had profound hearing impairment, one who had severe hearing loss had cochlear implantation, and four who had mild hearing loss were without any hearing device. The Hong Kong Cantonese Articulation Test was administered, and the tones produced were rated by two of the authors and a speech-language pathologist. Group effects of tones, hearing loss level, and also an interaction of the two were found to be significant. The children with profound hearing impairment performed significantly worse than most of the other children. Tone 1 was produced most accurately, whereas tone 6 productions were the poorest. No relationship was found between the number of years of mainstreaming and tone production ability. Tone production error pattern revealed that confusion patterns in tone perception coincided with those in production. Tones having a similar fundamental frequency (F0) at the onset also posed difficulty in tone production for children with hearing impairment.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the online processing of tone and intonation in Mandarin at the attentive stage. We examined the behavioral and electrophysiological responses of native Mandarin listeners to Mandarin sentences, which contrast in final tones (rising Tone2 or falling Tone4) and intonations (Question or Statement). A clear P300 effect was observed for question-statement contrast in sentences ending with Tone4, but no ERP effect was found for question-statement contrast in sentences ending with Tone2. Our results provide ERP evidence for the interaction of tone and intonation in Mandarin, confirming the findings with behavioral metalinguistic data that native Mandarin listeners can distinguish between question intonation and statement intonation when the intonation is associated with a final Tone4, but fail to do so when the intonation is associated with a final Tone2. Our study extended the understanding of online processing of tone and intonation (1) from the pre-attentive stage to the attentive stage and (2) within a larger domain (i.e. multi-word utterances) than a single word utterance.

A special mechanism of thermoelectric transport is described, consisting of pulses of charge carriers which "fly" periodically through the external circuit from the hot end of the sample to the cold end, with a determined duration of the "on" and "off" times of the electric contacts, while maintaining continuously the thermal contacts. It is shown that such a "resonant" ideal thermogenerator may work cyclically, with the same efficiency quotient as the ideal efficiency quotient of the thermoelectric devices operated in the usual stationary transport regime but the electric flow and power are increased, as a consequence of the concentration of the charge carriers on pulses of small spatial extent. The process is reversible, in the sense that it can be operated either as a thermoelectric generator or as an electrothermal cooler.

This dissertation investigates the occurrence of an intermediate stage, termed a covert contrast, in the acquisition of Mandarin Tone 2 (T2) and Tone 3 (T3) by adult speakers of American English. A covert contrast is a statistically reliable distinction produced by language learners that is not perceived by native speakers of the target language (TL). In second language (L2) acquisition, whether a learner is judged as having acquired a TL phonemic contrast has largely depended on whether the contrast was perceived and transcribed by native speakers of the TL. However, categorical perception has shown that native listeners cannot perceive a distinction between two sounds that fall within the same perceptual boundaries on the continuum of the relevant acoustic cues. In other words, it is possible that native speakers of the TL do not perceive a phonemic distinction that is produced by L2 learners when that distinction occurs within a phonemic boundary of TL. The data for the study were gathered through two elicitations of tone production, a longitudinal analysis, and two perception tasks. There were three key findings. First, both elicitations showed that most of the L2 participants produced a covert contrast between T2 and T3 on at least one of the three acoustic measures used in the study. Second, the longitudinal analysis reveals that some L2 participants progressed from making a covert contrast to a later stage of implementing an overt one, thereby supporting the claim that making a covert contrast is an intermediate stage in the process of acquiring a L2 phonemic contrast. Third, results of the perceptual tasks showed no reliable difference in identifying and discriminating Mandarin T2 and T3 on the part of the L2 learners who produced a covert contrast and those who produced an overt contrast, indicating that there was no reliable difference in the two groups' ability to perceive the target tones. In all, the occurrence of a covert contrast in the process of

Tone Burst Eddy current Thermography (TBET) is a new hybrid, non-contacting, Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDT) method which employs a combination of Pulsed Eddy current Thermography (PEC) and Thermographic Non-Destructive Evaluation (TNDE). For understanding angular cracks, fundamental knowledge about the induced current density distribution in the component under test is required. Further, this information enables us to find the amount of heat produced at those locations and how it diffuses to the surface. This paper describes simulation work done for cracks set at an angle to the surface in flat and bent aluminum plates. The investigation is implemented by the simulating transient thermal distribution for 2D angular cracks via finite element package COMSOL multi-physics with AC/DC module and general heat transfer. At crack edges, induced current is seen concentrated thus indicating a localized high heating in those areas relative to other regions. A numerical study was also carried out by varying parameters like crack angle (0°, 22.5°, 45°, 67.5°) and crack length (0.6mm, 1.2mm, 1.8mm) the transient thermal distributions were compared for different plate bend angles (180°, 120°, 90°, 60°, 30°). TBET method was found well suited for the detection of service induced cracks, usually caused by either rolling contact fatigue or stress corrosion, with a high degree of sensitivity.

The purpose of this paper was to calculate vagal tone (V) for 17 normal human fetuses in quiet sleep (QS) between 36 and 40 weeks gestation. The fetal cardiac electrical signal was captured transabdominally in 3-min blocks at a rate of 833 times per second and fetal R-waves were extracted using adaptive signal processing techniques. Fetal R-wave interbeat intervals were converted to equally spaced, time-based data, and the low-frequency component was removed using a 21-point third-order moving polynomial. The parameter V was calculated by taking the natural logarithm of the sum of the power densities between 0.3 Hz and 1.3 Hz. We found that fetal breathing was associated with an approximately 25% increase in V as compared to nonbreathing, 3.33 +/- 0.48 versus 2.57 +/- 0.47, p < 0.0001. Furthermore, there was a significant linear relationship between the mean single-fetus V during spontaneous respiration and the mean single-fetus V during normally occurring apneic periods, r = 0.772, p < 0.002. We conclude that respiratory activity is associated with a significant increase in vagal tone for normal human fetuses in QS.

Although it can be transformed by various electronic devices, the sound of the solid body electric guitar originates from, and is strongly linked with, the string vibration. The coupling of the string with the guitar alters its vibration and can lead to decay time inhomogeneities. This paper implements and justifies a framework for the study of decay times of electric guitar tones. Two damping mechanisms are theoretically and experimentally identified: the string intrinsic damping and the damping due to mechanical coupling with the neck of the guitar. The electromagnetic pickup is shown to not provide any additional damping to the string. The pickup is also shown to be far more sensitive to the out-of-plane polarization of the string. Finally, an accurate prediction of the decay time of electric guitar tones is made possible, whose only requirements are the knowledge of the isolated string dampings and the out-of-plane conductance at the neck of the guitar. This prediction can be of great help for instrument makers and manufacturers.

Kisspeptin has been implicated in cardiovascular control. Eicosanoids play a crucial role in the activation of platelets and the regulation of vascular tone. In the present study, we investigated the effect of kisspeptins on eicosanoid synthesis in platelets and aorta in vitro. Platelets and aorta were isolated from Wistar-Kyoto rats. After preincubation with different doses of kisspeptin, samples were incubated with [1-(14)C]arachidonic acid (0.172 pmol/mL) in tissue culture Medium 199. The amount of labeled eicosanoids was measured with liquid scintillation, after separation with overpressure thin-layer chromatography. Kisspeptin-13 stimulated the thromboxane synthesis. The dose-response curve was bell-shaped and the most effective concentration was 2.5 × 10(-8) mol/L, inducing a 27% increase. Lipoxygenase products of platelets displayed a dose-dependent elevation up to the dose of 5 × 10(-8) mol/L. In the aorta, kisspeptin-13 induced a marked elevation in the production of 6-keto-prostaglandin F1α, the stable metabolite of prostacyclin, and lipoxygenase products. Different effects of kisspeptin on cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase products indicate that beyond intracellular Ca(2+) mobilization, other signaling pathways might also contribute to its actions. Our data suggest that kisspeptin, through the alteration of eicosanoid synthesis in platelets and aorta, may play a physiologic and (or) pathologic role in the regulation of vascular tone.

Neuropsychologists have debated over whether the processing of segmental and suprasegmental units involves different neural mechanisms. Focusing on the production of Chinese lexical tones (suprasegmental units) and vowels (segmental units), this study used the adaptation paradigm to investigate a possible neural dissociation for tone and vowel production. Ten native Chinese speakers were asked to name Chinese characters and pinyin (Romanized phonetic system for Chinese language) that varied in terms of tones and vowels. fMRI results showed significant differences in the right inferior frontal gyrus between tone and vowel production (more activation for tones than for vowels). Brain asymmetry analysis further showed that tone production was less left-lateralized than vowel production, although both showed left-hemisphere dominance.

The Norwegian immunisation register, SYSVAK, is a national electronic immunisation register. It became nationwide in 1995. The major aim was to register all vaccinations in the Childhood Immunisation Programme to ensure that all children are offered adequate vaccination according to schedule in the programme, and to secure high vaccination coverage. Notification to SYSVAK is mandatory, based on personal identification numbers. This allows follow up of individual vaccination schedules and linkage of SYSVAK data to other national health registers for information on outcome diagnoses, such as the surveillance system for communicable diseases. Information from SYSVAK is used to determine vaccine coverage in a timely manner. Coverage can be broken down to regional/local levels and used for active surveillance of vaccination coverage and decisions about interventions. During the 2009 influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 pandemic, an adaptation of SYSVAK enabled daily surveillance of vaccination coverage on national and regional levels. Currently, data from SYSVAK are used, among others, in studies on adverse events related to pandemic vaccination. Future challenges include maximising usage of collected data in surveillance and research, and continued improvement of data quality. Immunisation registers are rich sources for high quality surveillance of vaccination coverage, effectiveness, vaccine failure and adverse events, and gold mines for research.

Ultrathin ferromagnetic strips with high perpendicular anisotropy have been proposed for the development of memory devices where the information is coded in tiny domains separated by domain walls. The design of practical devices requires creating, manipulating and detecting domain walls in ferromagnetic strips. Recent observations have shown highly efficient current-driven domain wall dynamics in multilayers lacking structural symmetry, where the walls adopt a chiral structure and can be driven at high velocities. However, putting such a device into practice requires the continuous and synchronous injection of domain walls as the first step. Here, we propose and demonstrate an efficient and simple scheme for nucleating domain walls using the symmetry of the spin orbit torques. Trains of short sub-nanosecond current pulses are injected in a double bit line to generate a localized longitudinal Oersted field in the ferromagnetic strip. Simultaneously, other current pulses are injected through the heavy metal under the ferromagnetic strip. Notably, the Slonczewski-like spin orbit torque assisted by the Oersted field allows the controlled injection of a series of domain walls, giving rise to a controlled manner for writing binary information and, consequently, to the design of a simple and efficient domain wall shift register.

To learn words, infants must be sensitive to native phonological contrast. While lexical tone predominates as a source of phonemic contrast in human languages, there has been little investigation of the influences of lexical tone on word learning. The present study investigates infants' sensitivity to tone mispronunciations in two groups of infants. For one group (Chinese learners), tone is phonemic in their native language, and for the second group (English learners), tone is non-phonemic and constituted suprasegmental variation. In Experiment 1, English learners were trained on novel word-object pairings and tested on their recognition of correct pronunciations, tone and vowel mispronunciations of these words at 18 and 24 months. In Experiment 2a, bilingual English-Chinese learners were tested on a similar task translated into Chinese at the same age intervals. Results demonstrate that non-tonal learners treated tonal and vowel substitutions alike as mispronunciations at 18 months but only treated vowel substitutions as mispronunciations at 24 months. Tonal learners treated both tonal and vowel substitutions as mispronunciations at both ages. In Experiment 2b, bilingual non-tone language learners were tested on the same set of tasks replicating a similar set of results as monolingual non-tone language learners (Experiment 1). Findings point to an early predisposition to treat tone as a defining characteristic of words regardless of its lexical relevance at 18 months. Between 18 and 24 months, learners appear to ascribe lexical relevance to tone in a language-specific manner. The current study identifies the influences of tone variation on memories for newly learned words and the time period during which lexical tone - a highly frequent constituent of human languages - actually becomes lexical for early learners. Findings are contextualized with prevailing models of the developing lexicon.

Full Text Available PVC and PET-G (Glycol modified polyethylene terephthalate have the highest consumption in the shrink sleeve market due to its high shrink abilities and cost effectiveness. The reproductions of fine tone details on these films are challenging as the occurrence of graininess and image-noise results in print defect such as print half-tone mottle. The presence of print half-tone mottle is visually disturbing leading to wastage of ink, substrate and time. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of gravure process parameters viz. ink viscosity, press speed, impression hardness and line screen and develop statistical model for print half-tone mottle in shrink films. The base line for print half-tone mottle was determined by conducting production runs on press with a defined set of process parameters and the target was set to minimize it from the baseline. The half-tone area was scanned and processed through SFDA algorithm to calculate print half-tone mottle. The design of experiments (DOE was generated for above-mentioned process parameters and was analysed by analysis of variance (ANOVA to find the significant factor affecting the print half-tone mottle. The analysis revealed line screen, viscosity and hardness as significant factors in minimizing print half-tone mottle. The results showed minimization of print half-tone mottle by 28% for both PVC and PET-G films. Furthermore, regression model was developed and validated for print half-tone mottle and a correlation coefficient (R2 of 0.8696 and 0.879 was achieved for PET-G and PVC respectively. The proposed model is helpful in determining the impact of gravure process parameters and prediction of print half-tone mottle in shrink films.

Abstract People with complex communication needs who use speech-generating devices have very little expressive control over their tone of voice. Despite its importance in human interaction, the issue of tone of voice remains all but absent from AAC research and development however. In this paper, we describe three interdisciplinary projects, past, present and future: The critical design collection Six Speaking Chairs has provoked deeper discussion and inspired a social model of tone of voice;...

The aim of the present study was to localize the dopamine receptors involved in the regulation of muscle tone. A strategy was used whereby the effects on muscle tone of injecting the irreversible dopamine receptor antagonist N-ethoxycarbonyl-2-ethoxy-1,2-dihydroquinoline (EEDQ) in discrete brain regions were assessed. Increases in muscle tone were measured as changes in electromyographic activity of the gastrocnemius and tibialis muscles of conscious, unrestrained rats. No increases in muscle...

Problem statement: Tone intelligibility in speech synthesis is an important attribute that should be taken into account. The tone correctness of the synthetic speech is degraded considerably in the average-voice-based HMM-based Thai speech synthesis. The tying mechanism in the decision tree based context clustering without appropriate criterion causes unexpected tone neutralization. Incorporation of the phrase intonation to the context clustering process in the training stage was proposed ear...

In this work, Mandarin tone production is examined using simultaneous laryngoscopy and laryngeal ultrasound (SLLUS). Laryngoscopy is used to obtain information about laryngeal state, and laryngeal ultrasound is used to quantify changes in larynx height. With this methodology, several observations are made concerning the production of Mandarin tone in citation form. Two production strategies are attested for low tone production: (i) larynx lowering and (ii) larynx raising with laryngeal constr...

Tone mapping algorithms are used to adapt captured wide dynamic range (WDR) scenes to the limited dynamic range of available display devices. Although there are several tone mapping algorithms available, most of them require manual tuning of their rendering parameters. In addition, the high complexities of some of these algorithms make it difficult to implement efficient real-time hardware systems. In this work, a real-time hardware implementation of an exponent-based tone mapping algorithm i...

Tone languages represent a large proportion of the spoken languages of the world and yet lexical tone is understudied. Thai offers a unique opportunity to investigate the role of lexical tone processing during visual-word recognition, as tone is explicitly expressed in its script. We used colour words and their orthographic neighbours as stimuli to investigate facilitation (Experiment 1) and interference (Experiment 2) Stroop effects. Five experimental conditions were created: (a) the colour word (e.g., ขาว /k(h)ã:w/ [white]), (b) tone different word (e.g., ข่าว /k(h)à:w/[news]), (c) initial consonant phonologically same word (e.g., คาว /k(h)a:w/ [fishy]), where the initial consonant of the word was phonologically the same but orthographically different, (d) initial consonant different, tone same word (e.g., หาว /hã:w/ yawn), where the initial consonant was orthographically different but the tone of the word was the same, and (e) initial consonant different, tone different word (e.g., กาว /ka:w/ glue), where the initial consonant was orthographically different, and the tone was different. In order to examine whether tone information per se had a facilitative effect, we also included a colour congruent word condition where the segmental (S) information was different but the tone (T) matched the colour word (S-T+) in Experiment 2. Facilitation/interference effects were found for all five conditions when compared with a neutral control word. Results of the critical comparisons revealed that tone information comes into play at a later stage in lexical processing, and orthographic information contributes more than phonological information.

This paper discusses the acquisition of Mandarin lexical tones by American second language ( L2 ) learners . The analysis of the tone errors in the reading passage and the spontaneous speech showed that the surface Tone 4 error is the most frequent at the prosodic word ( PW )‐initial position in both the intermediate and the advanced learner groups . Attempts were made to account for this tone error pattern within some second language acquisition (SLA) frameworks , but in vain . It was argued that this tone error pattern may be due to the high pitch tendency at the phrase‐or sentence‐initial position in speech . Although this is more of a general pattern across languages , the production of such a tendency by L2 learners superseded the underlying tones , hence the surface Tone 4 errors . The special status of Tone 4 in L2 speech corresponds to the special status of the same tone in the first language (L1 ) speech (Wan , 2007 ) . However , it was cautioned that such similarity should not be taken as evidence for the similarity in L1 and L2 acquisition in that different processes are involved in L1 and L2 production .

Full Text Available Problem statement: Tone intelligibility in speech synthesis is an important attribute that should be taken into account. The tone correctness of the synthetic speech is degraded considerably in the average-voice-based HMM-based Thai speech synthesis. The tying mechanism in the decision tree based context clustering without appropriate criterion causes unexpected tone neutralization. Incorporation of the phrase intonation to the context clustering process in the training stage was proposed early. However, the tone correctness is not satisfied. Approach: This study proposes a number of tonal features including tone-geometrical features and phrase intonation features to be exploited in the context clustering process of HMM training stage. Results: In the experiments, subjective evaluations of both average voice and adapted voice in terms of the intelligibility of tone are conducted. Effects on decision trees of the extracted features are also evaluated. By considering gender in training speech, two core experiments were conducted. The first experiment shows that the proposed tonal features can improve the tone intelligibility for female speech model above that of male speech model, while the second experiment shows that the proposed tonal features improve the tone intelligibility for gender dependent model than for gender independent model. Conclusion: All of the experimental results confirm that the tone correctness of the synthesized speech from the average-voice-based HMM-based Thai speech synthesis is significantly improved when using most of the extracted features.

Traditional one-bit ΣΔ modulators used for A/D and D/A conversion produce very predominant tones near half the sample rate which might intermodulate in the analog converter section and cause in-band tones. This paper demonstrates how the use of chaos can substitute dither as a means for extinguis......Traditional one-bit ΣΔ modulators used for A/D and D/A conversion produce very predominant tones near half the sample rate which might intermodulate in the analog converter section and cause in-band tones. This paper demonstrates how the use of chaos can substitute dither as a means...

This study investigates how students perceived social loafing and social interdependence influence group learning performance through group affective tone in undergraduate hospitality and tourism curricula...

Full Text Available Musical emotion can be conveyed by subtle variations in timbre. Here, we investigated whether the brain is capable to discriminate tones differing in emotional expression by recording event-related potentials (ERPs in an oddball paradigm under preattentive listening conditions. First, using multidimensional Fechnerian scaling, pairs of violin tones played with a happy or sad intonation were rated same or different by a group of non-musicians. Three happy and three sad tones were selected for the ERP experiment. The Fechnerian distances between tones within an emotion were in the same range as the distances between tones of different emotions. In two conditions, either 3 happy and 1 sad or 3 sad and 1 happy tone were presented in pseudo-random order. A mismatch negativity for the emotional deviant was observed, indicating that in spite of considerable perceptual differences between the three equiprobable tones of the standard emotion, a template was formed based on timbral cues against which the emotional deviant was compared. Based on Juslin’s assumption of redundant code usage, we propose that tones were grouped together, because they were identified as belonging to one emotional category based on different emotion-specific cues. These results indicate that the brain forms an emotional memory trace at a preattentive level and thus extends previous investigations in which emotional deviance was confounded with physical dissimilarity. Differences between sad and happy tones were observed which might be due to the fact that the happy emotion is mostly communicated by suprasegmental features.

Musical emotion can be conveyed by subtle variations in timbre. Here, we investigated whether the brain is capable to discriminate tones differing in emotional expression by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) in an oddball paradigm under preattentive listening conditions. First, using multidimensional Fechnerian scaling, pairs of violin tones played with a happy or sad intonation were rated same or different by a group of non-musicians. Three happy and three sad tones were selected for the ERP experiment. The Fechnerian distances between tones within an emotion were in the same range as the distances between tones of different emotions. In two conditions, either 3 happy and 1 sad or 3 sad and 1 happy tone were presented in pseudo-random order. A mismatch negativity for the emotional deviant was observed, indicating that in spite of considerable perceptual differences between the three equiprobable tones of the standard emotion, a template was formed based on timbral cues against which the emotional deviant was compared. Based on Juslin's assumption of redundant code usage, we propose that tones were grouped together, because they were identified as belonging to one emotional category based on different emotion-specific cues. These results indicate that the brain forms an emotional memory trace at a preattentive level and thus, extends previous investigations in which emotional deviance was confounded with physical dissimilarity. Differences between sad and happy tones were observed which might be due to the fact that the happy emotion is mostly communicated by suprasegmental features.

Introduction: The Danish Twin Registry (DTR) has for more than 50 years been based on surveys and clinical investigations and over the two last decades also on register linkage. Currently these two approaches are merged within Statistics Denmark. Research topics: Here we report on three major...... groups of register-based research in the DTR that used the uniqueness of twinning. First, we focus on the ''long-term prognosis'' of being a twin compared with being a singleton and show that Danish twins have health trajectories in adulthood similar to singletons, which is a result of interest for twins...... and their families as well as a test of the fetal origins hypothesis that states that fetal growth restriction has long-term health consequences. Secondly, we summarise some of the most important register-based ''classical twin studies'', e.g. heritability studies on lifespan and exceptional longevity. Finally, we...

It is relatively clear how to map regular,repetitive or grid oriented computations onto SIMD architectures.It is not so clear,however,how to do this for irregular computations even though there may be significant amounts of intrinsic parallelism in branch free code.We study compilation techniques for this type of code when targeted to SIMD computers and illustrate their use on a simple model architecture.In this paper,we present one of the compilation techniques,global register allocation,we have developed for SIMD computers,and demonstrate that it can effectively allocate registers for parallelizing irregular computations in branch free code.This technique is an extension and a modification of the register allocation via graph coloring approach used by sequential compilers.Our performance results validate our method.

In the course of high-level synthesis of integrate circuit, the hard-to-test structure caused by irrational schedule and allocation reduces the testability of circuit. In order to improve the circuit testability, this paper proposes a weighted compatibility graph (WCG), which provides a weighted formula of compatibility graph based on register allocation for testability and uses improved weighted compatibility clique partition algorithm to deal with this WCG. As a result, four rules for testability are considered simultaneously in the course of register allocation so that the objective of improving the design of testability is acquired. Tested by many experimental results of benchmarks and compared with many other models, the register allocation algorithm proposed in this paper has greatly improved the circuit testability with little overhead on the final circuit area.

If you are a European Union citizen residing in France and wish to vote in the forthcoming local elections you must register on the supplementary register at your town hall (mairie) before 31 December 2007. EU citizens are regarded as residing in France if their primary residence is in France or if they live there continuously. To be eligible to vote you must: be a national of one of the 26 listed States of the European Union and present a valid identification document. Residence permits are valid; be at least 18 years old by the closing date of revision of the supplementary electoral register, i.e. by the last day of February; enjoy civic rights both in France and in your State of origin. For more information: http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/particuliers/F1937.xhtml?&n=Elections&l=N4&n=Elections%20politiques&l=N47

Hypernasality is associated with various diseases and interferes with speech intelligibility. A recently developed quantitative index called voice low tone to high tone ratio (VLHR) was used to estimate nasalization. The voice spectrum is divided into low-frequency power (LFP) and high-frequency power (HFP) by a specific cutoff frequency (600 Hz). VLHR is defined as the division of LFP into HFP and is expressed in decibels. Voice signals of the sustained vowel [a :] and its nasalization in eight subjects with hypernasality were collected for analysis of nasalance and VLHR. The correlation of VLHR with nasalance scores was significant (r = 0.76, p < 0.01), and so was the correlation between VLHR and perceptual hypernasality scores (r = 0.80, p < 0.01). Simultaneous recordings of nasal airflow temperature with a thermistor and voice signals in another 8 healthy subjects showed a significant correlation between temperature rate of nasal airflow and VLHR (r = 0.76, p < 0.01), as well. We conclude that VLHR may become a potential quantitative index of hypernasal speech and can be applied in either basic or clinical studies.

The Nordic (Scandinavian) countries have had working arthroplasty registers for several years. However, the small numbers of inhabitants and the conformity within each country with respect to preferred prosthesis brands and techniques have limited register research. A collaboration called NARA (Nordic Arthroplasty Register Association) was started in 2007, resulting in a common database for Denmark, Norway, and Sweden with regard to hip replacements in 2008 and primary knee replacements in 2009. Finland joined the project in 2010. A code set was defined for the parameters that all registers had in common, and data were re-coded, within each national register, according to the common definitions. After de-identification of the patients, the anonymous data were merged into a common database. The first study based on this common database included 280,201 hip arthroplasties and the second, 151,814 knee arthroplasties. Kaplan-Meier and Cox multiple regression analyses, with adjustment for age, sex, and diagnosis, were used to calculate prosthesis survival, with any revision as the end point. In later studies, specific reasons for revision were also used as end points. We found differences among the countries concerning patient demographics, preferred surgical approaches, fixation methods, and prosthesis brands. Prosthesis survival was best in Sweden, where cement implant fixation was used more commonly than it was in the other countries. As the comparison of national results was one of the main initial aims of this collaboration, only parameters and data that all three registers could deliver were included in the database. Compared with each separate register, this combined register resulted in reduced numbers of parameters and details. In future collaborations of registers with a focus on comparing the performances of prostheses and articulations, we should probably include only the data needed specifically for the predetermined purposes, from registers that can

Most ultrasonic guided wave methods focus on tone burst excitation to reduce the effect of dispersion so as to facilitate signal interpretation. However, the resolution of the output cannot attain a very high value because time duration of the excitation waveform cannot be very small. To overcome this limitation, a pulse compression technique is introduced to Lamb wave propagation to achieve a δ-like correlation so as to obtain a high resolution for inspection. Ideal δ-like correlation is impossible as only a finite frequency bandwidth can propagate. The primary purpose of this paper is to design a proper excitation waveform for Lamb wave pulse compression, which shortens the correlation as close as possible to a δ function. To achieve this purpose, the performance of some typical signals is discussed in pulse compression, which include linear chirp (L-Chirp) signal, nonlinear chirp (NL-Chirp) signal, Barker code (BC), and Golay complementary code (GCC). In addition, how the excitation frequency range influences inspection resolution is investigated. A strategy for the frequency range determination is established subsequently. Finally, an experiment is carried out on an aluminum plate where these typical signals are used as excitations at different frequency ranges. The quantitative comparisons of the pulse compression responses validate the theoretical findings. By utilizing the experimental data, the improvement of pulse compression in resolution compared with tone burst excitation is also validated, and the robustness of the waveform design method to inaccuracies in the dispersion compensation is discussed as well.

Full Text Available The article focuses on the registration history and legal acts of Lithuanian cultural heritage and examines the register of estate cultural heritage and conditions for including estate cultural heritage into the register. The article also looks at the criteria of evaluating estate cultural heritage such as age limit, authentication features and the level of significance (national, regional, local. The paper presents information on the criteria applied for assessing heritage list in the United Kingdom, and UNESCO as well as introduces the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage and the Nara Document. Article in Lithuanian

Full Text Available A population register is an inventory of residents within a country, with their characteristics (date of birth, sex, marital status, etc. and other socio-economic data, such as occupation or education. However, data on population are also stored in numerous other public registers such as tax, land, building and housing, military, foreigners, vehicles, etc. Altogether they contain vast amounts of personal and sensitive information. Access to public information is granted by law in many countries, but this transparency is generally subject to tensions with data protection laws. This paper proposes a framework to analyze data access (or protection requirements, as well as a model of metadata for data exchange.

This patent covers a continuous countercurrent liquidsolids contactor column having a number of contactor states each comprising a perforated plate, a layer of balls, and a downcomer tube; a liquid-pulsing piston; and a solids discharger formed of a conical section at the bottom of the column, and a tubular extension on the lowest downcomer terminating in the conical section. Between the conical section and the downcomer extension is formed a small annular opening, through which solids fall coming through the perforated plate of the lowest contactor stage. This annular opening is small enough that the pressure drop thereacross is greater than the pressure drop upward through the lowest contactor stage. (AEC)

Ultrasound (US)-microbubble (MB)-mediated therapies have been found to restore perfusion and enhance drug/gene delivery. On the presumption that MBs do not persist during long US exposure under high acoustic pressures, most schemes use short US pulses when a high US pressure is employed. However, we recently observed an enhanced thrombolytic effect using long US pulses at high acoustic pressures. Therefore, we explored the fate of MBs during long tone-burst exposures (5 ms) at various acoustic pressures and MB concentrations via direct high-speed optical observation and passive cavitation detection. MBs first underwent stable or inertial cavitation depending on the acoustic pressure and then formed gas-filled clusters that continued to oscillate, break up and form new clusters. Cavitation detection confirmed continued, albeit diminishing, acoustic activity throughout the 5-ms US excitation. These data suggest that persisting cavitation activity during long tone bursts may confer additional therapeutic effects.

Sympathetic reflex regulation of subcutaneous blood flow (SBF) in the forearm was studied in eight patients with primary hypothyroidism. Diastolic arterial pressure was greater than or equal to 95 mmHg in five patients. SBF was determined by local clearance of Na99mTcO4. Sympathetic vasoconstrict......Sympathetic reflex regulation of subcutaneous blood flow (SBF) in the forearm was studied in eight patients with primary hypothyroidism. Diastolic arterial pressure was greater than or equal to 95 mmHg in five patients. SBF was determined by local clearance of Na99mTcO4. Sympathetic.......02)). In conclusion sympathetic vasoconstrictor activity in adipose tissue is markedly increased in primary hypothyroidism. Sympathetic tone and arterial pressure are reduced during treatment....

Multifunctional films have the potential to reduce the number of processing steps to prepare various complex electronic devices and thereby reduce the cost of manufacturing the device and increase the throughput of the process. By combining low dielectric thin film and photoresist technologies into one material, such an advantage could be provided to electronics device markets. Air Products and Chemicals has discovered negative tone photodefinable films having dielectric constant values less than 3.0 that are developable in water and/or aqueous TMAH solutions. The low dielectric films produced via a novel reaction pathway involving the use of photoacid generators (PAGs) provides a versatile link to various feature sizes depending on the choice of radiation source and PAG used. Specific examples of film properties and processing latitude will be presented for these developmental materials.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) images/videos require the use of a tone mapping operator (TMO) when visualized on Low Dynamic Range (LDR) displays. From an artistic intention point of view, TMOs are not necessarily transparent and might induce different behavior to view the content. In this paper, we investigate and quantify how TMOs modify visual attention (VA). To that end both objective and subjective tests in the form of eye-tracking experiments have been conducted on several still image content that have been processed by 11 different TMOs. Our studies confirm that TMOs can indeed modify human attention and fixation behavior significantly. Therefore our studies suggest that VA needs consideration for evaluating the overall perceptual impact of TMOs on HDR content. Since the existing studies so far have only considered the quality or aesthetic appeal angle, this study brings in a new perspective regarding the importance of VA in HDR content processing for visualization on LDR displays.

Studies over several decades have identified many of the neuronal substrates of music perception by pursuing pitch and rhythm perception separately. Here, we address the question of how these mechanisms interact, starting with the observation that the peripheral pathways of the so-called "Core" and "Matrix" thalamocortical system provide the anatomical bases for tone and rhythm channels. We then examine the hypothesis that these specialized inputs integrate acoustic content within rhythm context in auditory cortex using classical types of "driving" and "modulatory" mechanisms. This hypothesis provides a framework for deriving testable predictions about the early stages of music processing. Furthermore, because thalamocortical circuits are shared by speech and music processing, such a model provides concrete implications for how music experience contributes to the development of robust speech encoding mechanisms.

Full Text Available We present an improvement of TSTM, a recently proposed tone mapping operator for High Dynamic Range (HDR images, based on a multi-modal analysis. One of the key features of TSTM is a suitable implementation of the Naka-Rushton equation that mimics the visual adaptation performed by the human visual system coherently with Weber-Fechner's law of contrast perception. In the present paper we use the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM in order to detect the modes of the log-scale luminance histogram of a given HDR image and then we use the information provided by GMM to properly devise a Naka-Rushton equation for each mode. Finally, we properly select the parameters in order to merge those equations into a continuous function. Tests and comparisons to show how this new method is capable of improving the performances of TSTM are provided and commented, as well as comparisons with state of the art methods.

Guidelines are presented for the establishment of a regional or national register of patients with familial adenomatous polyposis. The detailed recommendations are based on the work in committees of the "Leeds Castle Polyposis Group" and the "EuroFAP". The aims of national and regional polyposis...

This document outlines undergraduate programs leading to degrees in environmental engineering from 22 schools across the country. The register includes general information on the school and program as well as specific information on admission requirements, degree requirements, course work, and faculty and student data. A copy of the questionnaire…

It is the substitution of an agreeable expression for one that may offend something unpleasant.Euphemisms have a close relationship with context,especially tenor of discourse.This paper attempts to analyze the variation of euphemisms guided by register theory.

A personal view made in light of the recent news article regarding a husband wanting to sue Addenbrooke's hospital over a Do Not Attempt Resuscitation decision. This article aims to highlight how the rolling out of cross boundary palliative care registers may be more at risk of infringing human rights.

This is a corpus-based investigation of "also" and "too" in 11 registers of Indian English. The corpus used for this study is a combination of a Corpus of Contemporary Indian English (CCIE), and certain sections of ICE-India. The study: (1) determines the proportions of "also" and "too" with respect to each…

This is a corpus-based investigation of "also" and "too" in 11 registers of Indian English. The corpus used for this study is a combination of a Corpus of Contemporary Indian English (CCIE), and certain sections of ICE-India. The study: (1) determines the proportions of "also" and "too" with respect to each…

This paper describes the methods used to study the tone and some related phenomena of the language of the Gavião of Rondônia, Brazil, which is part of the Mondé branch of the Tupi family. Whistling of words by indigenous informants was discovered to be a very effective method for obtaining phonetic accuracy in tone and length. Methods were devised…

“入声”是中古韵书以及到现代方言研究中的一个重要概念。关于入声的性质，主要有“入声为声”和“入声非声”两种观点。夏中易在前人基础上对入声的性质做了较全面的研究，认为入声的内涵是指塞音韵尾，入声韵的声调是平上去调位的变体。但结合音位学“区别特征”的理论，发现夏先生的音位归纳存在一些问题。中古汉语音节可以分为舒声调系和促声调系，入声作为促声调系和平上去形成的舒声调系相并立。%Entering tone is an important concept in ancient and modern Chinese dialect,which has always been taken as a type of tone Some scholars argue that entering tone is not a type of tone, only a glottal stop.XiaZhongyi emphasized that more.However, some others thought that the entering tone is an independent tone category, which co-exists as the “Cu-tone System” and the“Shu-tone System” in modern Chinese.

The acoustic spectrum emitted by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other aircraft can be distorted by propagation through atmospheric turbulence. Since most UAVs are propeller-based, they generate a series of acoustic tones and harmonics. In this paper, spectral broadening of these tones due...

To investigate how hearing loss affects the loudness of brief tones, loudness matches between 5- and 200-ms tones were obtained as a function of level. Loudness functions derived from these data indicated that the gain required to restore loudness usually is the same for short and long sounds....

Chronic contractile activation, or tone, in asthma coupled with continuous stretching due to breathing may be involved in altering the contractile function of airway smooth muscle (ASM). Previously, we (11) showed that cytoskeletal remodeling and stiffening responses to acute (2 h) localized stresses were modulated by the level of contractile activation of ASM. Here, we investigated if altered contractility in response to chronic mechanical strain was dependent on repeated modulation of contractile tone. Cultured human ASM cells received 5% cyclic (0.3 Hz), predominantly uniaxial strain for 5 days, with once-daily dosing of either sham, forskolin, carbachol, or histamine to alter tone. Stiffness, contractility (KCl), and "relaxability" (forskolin) were then measured as was cell alignment, myosin light-chain phosphorylation (pMLC), and myosin light-chain kinase (MLCK) content. Cells became aligned and baseline stiffness increased with strain, but repeated lowering of tone inhibited both effects (P negative tone-modulation dependence of MLCK, observed in static conditions in agreement with previous reports, with strain and tone together increasing both MLCK and pMLC. Furthermore, contractility increased 176% (SE 59) with repeated tone elevation. These findings indicate that with strain, and not without, repeated tone elevation promoted contractile function through changes in cytoskeletal organization and increased contractile protein. The ability of repeated contractile activation to increase contractility, but only with mechanical stretching, suggests a novel mechanism for increased ASM contractility in asthma and for the role of continuous bronchodilator and corticosteroid therapy in reversing airway hyperresponsiveness.

The utility of Chinese tone processing skill in detecting children with English reading difficulties was examined through differences in a Chinese tone experimental task between a group of native English-speaking children with reading disabilities (RD) and a comparison group of children with normal reading development (NRD). General auditory…

This study examined the role of auditory stream segregation in the selective attention to target tones in infancy. Using a task adapted from Bregman and Rudnicky's 1975 study and implemented in a conditioned head-turn procedure, infant and adult listeners had to discriminate the temporal order of 2,200 and 2,400 Hz target tones presented alone,…

To investigate how hearing loss affects the loudness of brief tones, loudness matches between 5- and 200-ms tones were obtained as a function of level. Loudness functions derived from these data indicated that the gain required to restore loudness usually is the same for short and long sounds....

Four eye movement experiments investigated whether readers use parafoveal input to gain information about the phonological or orthographic forms of consonants, vowels, and tones in word recognition when reading Thai silently. Target words were presented in sentences preceded by parafoveal previews in which consonant, vowel, or tone information was…

Learning the Chinese tone system is a major challenge to students of Chinese as a second or foreign language. Part of the problem is that the spoken Chinese syllable presents a complex perceptual input that overlaps tone with segments. This complexity can be addressed through directing attention to

The current study lays the groundwork for a model of Mandarin tones based on both native speakers' and non-native speakers' perception and production. It demonstrates that there is variability in non-native speakers' tone productions and that there are differences in the perceptual boundaries in native speakers and non-native speakers. There…

This study investigates factors that affect the accuracy of tone production by American students of Vietnamese as a second language (L2). Nine hypotheses are examined, each of which isolates a factor expected to affect production accuracy: (a) task type, (b) the position of a tone in a clause, (c) discourse distance between a model provided by a…

The primary objective of the present study was to document tone production and intelligibility deficits in Mandarin-speaking persons with cerebral palsy (CP). Spastic, athetoid, and mixed types of CP were studied, along with a control group, to investigate the possibility of tone production and intelligibility deficits that were differentially…

Previous research has shown that native speakers of American English who are musicians perform better than non-musicians when identifying and producing the four phonemic tones of Mandarin. The present study corroborates these findings and analyzes acoustic properties of non-natives' tonal imitations. Listeners imitated Mandarin two-syllable word phrases that varied the vowel (/li/, /la/, /lu/) and tone (high-level, mid-rising, low-dipping, high-falling) of the first syllable. Four native Mandarin speakers rated the musicians, on average, to be better in their imitation of Mandarin tone 4 (high-falling) than non-musicians. There were no significant differences between groups in how they were rated on the other three tones. Acoustical analyses revealed that non-natives failed to match native speakers both in differences in initial F0 and in F0 contour (change from initial to final F0) across tones. Imitations by musicians did not show significant acoustic differences from non-musicians, except for tone 4, where musicians' imitations showed a significant decrease in F0 from initial to final portions of the syllable; the decrease in F0 for non-musicians was smaller and not significant. Creaky voice (often present in natives' tone 3 and 4) was observed in many non-native imitations, but was not restricted to tones 3 and 4.

Skin-tone preferences and colourism within Hispanic children have been largely unexamined in the psychological literature. The objectives of the current study were to investigate Hispanic children's skin-tone preferences and the effect of assessor race and ethnicity on those preferences. To carry out the study, Clark and Clark's colouring task was…

Skin-tone preferences and colourism within Hispanic children have been largely unexamined in the psychological literature. The objectives of the current study were to investigate Hispanic children's skin-tone preferences and the effect of assessor race and ethnicity on those preferences. To carry out the study, Clark and Clark's colouring task was…

Purpose: This study investigates the impact of intertalker variations on the process of mapping acoustic variations on tone categories in two different tone languages. Method: Pitch stimuli manipulated from four voice ranges were presented in isolation through a blocked-talker design. Listeners were instructed to identify the stimuli that they…

BACKGROUND: Supraspinal sympathetic control of leg vascular tone is lost in spinal cord-injured individuals, but this does not result in a reduced leg vascular tone: Leg vascular resistance is even increased. The aim of this study was to assess the alpha-adrenergic contribution to the increased vasc

Purpose: Quantification of tissue stiffness may facilitate identification of abnormalities in orofacial muscle tone and thus contribute to differential diagnosis of dysarthria. Tissue stiffness is affected by muscle tone as well as age-related changes in muscle and connective tissue. Method: The Myoton-3 measured tissue stiffness in 40 healthy…

Neural control of rising and falling tones in Mandarin people who stutter (PWS) was examined by comparing with that which occurs in fluent speakers [Howell, Jiang, Peng, and Lu (2012). Neural control of fundamental frequency rise and fall in Mandarin tones. "Brain and Language, 121"(1), 35-46]. Nine PWS and nine controls were scanned. Functional…

The purpose of this study was to explore the music-speech relationship by examining pitch height perception in lexical and musical tones. English-speaking musicians and nonmusicians identified multispeaker Taiwanese level tones without typical cues for speaker normalization. The musicians also identified note names of piano, viola, and pure tones without a reference pitch. In the Taiwanese task, both the musicians and nonmusicians were able to identify tone height above chance, but only for tones at the extremes of the speakers' overall vocal range. The musicians only had a slight advantage over the nonmusicians. In the music task, none of the musicians met the criterion for absolute pitch. Timbre did not affect how accurately the musical tones were identified. No correlations were found between performance in the Taiwanese task and that in the music task. It was concluded that musicians' advantage in lexical tone perception arose from the ability to track F0 contours. The ability to identify pitch height in lexical tones appears to involve calibrating acoustic input according to gender-specific, internally stored pitch templates.

Purpose: Quantification of tissue stiffness may facilitate identification of abnormalities in orofacial muscle tone and thus contribute to differential diagnosis of dysarthria. Tissue stiffness is affected by muscle tone as well as age-related changes in muscle and connective tissue. Method: The Myoton-3 measured tissue stiffness in 40 healthy…

The relation between cry acoustics and vagal tone in normal, healthy newborns undergoing an acutely stressful event was examined. Vagal tone was significantly reduced during the stressful event and was paralleled by significant increases in the pitch of the infants' cries. (PCB)

Register theory is one of the most important theories of systemic functional linguistics,which is concerned with the vari-ables of field,tenor,and mode,and is a useful abstraction which relates variations of language use to variations of social context.Bilingual dic-tionaries contain as adrule in the front matter systematic categorization and detailed description of register labels.This paper attempts to analyze the register labels in bilingual dictionaries and discuss the problems existing indregister labeling.

Full Text Available Although musical training has been shown to facilitate both native and nonnative phonetic perception, it remains unclear whether and how musical experience affects native speakers’ categorical perception (CP of speech at the suprasegmental level. Using both identification and discrimination tasks, this study compared Chinese-speaking musicians and non-musicians in their categorical perception of a lexical tone continuum (from the high level tone, Tone1 to the high falling tone, Tone4. While the identification functions showed similar steepness and boundary location between the two subject groups, the discrimination results revealed superior performance in the musicians for discriminating within-category stimuli pairs but not for between-category stimuli. These findings suggest that musical training can enhance sensitivity to subtle pitch differences between within-category sounds in the presence of robust mental representations in service of categorical perception of lexical tonal contrasts.

To track the course of development in children's fine-grained perception of Mandarin tones, the present study explored how categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin tones emerges along age among 70 four- to seven-year-old children and 16 adults. Prominent discrimination peaks were found for both the child and the adult groups, and they were well aligned with the corresponding identification crossovers. Moreover, six-year-olds showed a much narrower width (i.e. a sharper slope) compared to younger children, and have already acquired adult-like identification competence of Mandarin high-level and mid-rising tones. Although the ability to discriminate within-category tone pairs did not change, the between-category discrimination accuracies were positively correlated with chronological ages among child participants. We assume that the perceptual refinement of Mandarin tones in young children may be driven by an accumulation of perceptual development from the tonal information of the ambient sound input.

Research on affect as a group-level phenomenon has shown that over time, individual members within a group become highly similar in their affect (i.e., members experience and display similar emotions and moods), and often become similar enough that the aggregation of individuals' affect can meaningfully represent the "affective tone" of the group. It is generally assumed that a more positive affective tone will lead to better team performance. We challenge the conclusion that positive affective tone is always good for team performance, suggesting that the relationship between positive affective tone and team performance is subject to moderating influences. Across two studies, we demonstrate that the self-reported collective emotional skills of team members play a crucial role in determining whether positive affective tone is beneficial or detrimental to team performance. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

This paper analyzes the register character of business English from the systemic functional linguistics. By citing some examples, this paper attempts to highlight the expression and effect of register theory in business English, aiming at helping business people understand the register in order to apply the register correctly and avoiding making mistakes in daily communication and practices, so that business go smoothly.

BACKGROUND: Patients with schizophrenia have been shown to have an increased risk of criminality, especially violent crimes. AIMS: The aim of the current study was to describe the pattern of crimes committed by Danish patients with schizophrenia and examine the sanctions given for crimes...... in relation to the different periods in the patients' lives: not yet known to the psychiatric hospital system, known to the system but not yet diagnosed with schizophrenia, and after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. METHODS: Information from the Danish Psychiatric Central Research Register was correlated...... with data from the Danish National Crime Register. RESULTS: One of the more prominent findings was that 16% of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia receive a prison sentence or a suspended prison sentence, despite the fact that Denmark is a co-signatory of the European Prison Rules and should treat, rather...

The aim of this article is to explore the views of registered nurses undertaking the new Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), incorporating an integrated preparatory skills workshop. The workshop and the OSCE were audited with particular regard to the student experience. This article describes the audit process and the results of three questionnaires: one carried out before the OSCE assessment, a second immediately after the workshop and a third four days after the assessment. The results provide an insight into the student experience.

A method for measuring a wide range of SET pulses is demonstrated. Use of dynamic logic, faster than ordinary CMOS, allows capture of short pulses. A weighted binning of SET lengths allows measurement of a wide range of pulse lengths with compact circuitry. A pulse-length-conservative pulse combiner tree routes SETs from combinational logic to the measurement circuit, allowing SET measurements in circuits that cannot easily be arranged in long chains. The method is applied to add-multiplex combinational logic, and to an array of NFET routing switches, at .35 micron. Pulses are captured in a chain of Domino Logic AND gates. Propagation through the chain is frozen on the trailing edge by dropping low the second "enable" input to the AND gates. Capacitive loading is increased in the latter stages to create an approximately logarithmic weighted binning, so that a broad range of pulse lengths can be captured with a 10 stage capture chain. Simulations show pulses can be captured which are 1/5th the length of those typically captured with leading edge triggered latch methods, and less than the length of those captured with a trailing edge latch method. After capture, the pulse pattern is transferred to an SEU protected shift register for readout. 64 instances of each of two types of logic are used as targets. One is a full adder with a 4 to 1 mux on its inputs. The other is a 4 x 4 NFET routing matrix. The outputs are passed through buffered XNOR comparators to identify pulses, which are merged in a buffered not-nand (OR) tree designed to avoid pulse absorption as much as possible. The output from each of the two test circuits are input into separate pulse measurement circuits. Test inputs were provided so that the circuit could be bench tested and calibrated. A third SET measurement circuit with no inputs was used to judge the contribution from direct hits on the measurement circuit. Heavy ions were used with an LET range from 12 to 176. At LET of 21 and below, the very

The magnetoencephalogram (MEG) was used to detect regional changes in spontaneous cortical activity accompanying short-term memory search. This method was chosen because magnetic fields are detectable only within a few centimeters of the projections of their sources onto the scalp. The specific hypothesis that auditory cortex is involved in scanning memory for tones was tested by sensing the field of the magnetic counterpart to N100 (N100m) which is known to originate in auditory cortex. N100m was measured at many different positions and the spontaneous cortical rhythms in the alpha bandwidth (8-12 Hz) were measured at the same places. These rhythms were found to be suppressed while subjects scanned memory for musical tones in a Sternberg paradigm. For 3 subjects, both the MEG suppression time (ST) and reaction time (RT) increased linearly with memory set size. The correlation between ST measured over the left hemisphere and set size was significant for two subjects but not significant for the third, and the slopes of the regression lines relating ST to set size were too shallow to be related to the time required to scan memory. However, the correlation between ST of the right hemisphere and set size was highly significant for all subjects, and the slopes of the regression lines were comparable to those relating RT to set size. The electroencephalogram (EEG) recorded with midline electrodes failed to reveal a significant relationship between suppression time and set size for 2 of the subjects, thus ruling out global alpha blockage and generalized arousal as the basis for the task-related suppression duration. The electric N100, measured at Cz, decreased significantly in amplitude with set size for 2 subjects, but it increased significantly in amplitude for the third subject. In contrast, RT increased with set size for all subjects. N100m measured over the right hemisphere was similar to the behavior of N100, while N100m measured over the left hemisphere showed

Full Text Available RNA interference (RNAi is a mechanism whereby small RNAs (siRNAs directly control gene expression without assistance from proteins. This mechanism consists of interactions between RNAs and small RNAs both of which may be single or double stranded. The target of the mechanism is mRNA to be degraded or aberrated, while the initiator is double stranded RNA (dsRNA to be cleaved into siRNAs. Observing the digital nature of RNAi, we represent RNAi as a Minsky register machine such that (i The two registers hold single and double stranded RNAs respectively, and (ii Machine's instructions are interpreted by interactions of enzyme (Dicer, siRNA (with RISC com- plex and polymerization (RdRp to the appropriate registers. Interpreting RNAi as a computational structure, we can investigate the computational meaning of RNAi, especially its complexity. Initially, the machine is configured as a Chemical Ground Form (CGF, which generates incorrect jumps. To remedy this problem, the system is remodeled as recursive RNAi, in which siRNA targets not only mRNA but also the machine instructional analogues of Dicer and RISC. Finally, probabilistic termination is investigated in the recursive RNAi system.

To attain a shorter laser pulse, a compressing technique called pulse feedback was developed from the saturation gain switch applied to the amplification in a discharge pumping excimer laser cavity. It can

Optics is the field of physics which comprises knowledge on the interaction between light and matter. When the superposition principle can be applied to electromagnetic waves or when the properties of matter do not depend on the intensity of light, one speaks of linear optics. This situation occurs with regular light sources such as light bulbs, low-intensity light-emitting diodes and the sun. With such low-intensity sources the reaction of matter to light can be characterized by a set of parameters such as the index of refraction, the absorption and reflection coefficients and the orientation of the medium with respect to the polarization of the light. These parameters depend only on the nature of the medium. The situation changed dramatically after the development of lasers in the early sixties, which allowed the generation of light intensities larger than a kilowatt per square centimeter. Actual large-scale short-pulse lasers can generate peak powers in the petawatt regime. In that large-intensity regime the optical parameters of a material become functions of the intensity of the impinging light. In 1818 Fresnel wrote a letter to the French Academy of Sciences in which he noted that the proportionality between the vibration of the light and the subsequent vibration of matter was only true because no high intensities were available. The intensity dependence of the material response is what usually defines nonlinear optics.

Passive neutron coincidence/multiplicity counters are subject to non-ideal behavior, such as double pulsing and dead time. It has been shown in the past that double-pulsing exhibits a distinct signature in a Rossi-alpha distribution, which is not readily noticed using traditional Multiplicity Shift Register analysis. However, it has been assumed that the use of a pre-delay in shift register analysis removes any effects of double pulsing. In this work, we use high-fidelity simulations accompanied by experimental measurements to study the effects of double pulsing on multiplicity rates. By exploiting the information from the double pulsing signature peak observable in the Rossi-alpha distribution, the double pulsing fraction can be determined. Algebraic correction factors for the multiplicity rates in terms of the double pulsing fraction have been developed. We discuss the role of these corrections across a range of scenarios.

A novel solid-state modulator capable of generating rapid consecutive power pulses is constructed to facilitate experiments on plasma interaction with high power microwave pulses. The modulator is designed to output a 100 kHz tone burst, which consists of up to 10 pulses, each with 1 μs duration and 1 MW peak power. The pulses are formed by discharging a total of 480 μF capacitors through 24 synchronized MOSFETs and 6 step-up transformers. The highly modular design, as a replacement of an old single-pulse version used in earlier experiments which employs a pulse forming network, brings great flexibility and wide potential to its application. A systematic cost-effectiveness analysis is also presented.

Full Text Available The effect of hand proximity on vision and visual attention has been well documented. In this study we tested whether such effect(s would also be present in the auditory modality. With hands placed either near or away from the audio sources, participants performed an auditory-spatial discrimination (Exp 1: left or right side, pitch discrimination (Exp 2: high, med, or low tone, and spatial-plus-pitch (Exp 3: left or right; high, med, or low discrimination task. In Exp 1, when hands were away from the audio source, participants consistently responded faster with their right hand regardless of stimulus location. This right hand advantage, however, disappeared in the hands-near condition because of a significant improvement in left hand’s reaction time. No effect of hand proximity was found in Exp 2 or 3, where a choice reaction time task requiring pitch discrimination was used. Together, these results suggest that the effect of hand proximity is not exclusive to vision alone, but is also present in audition, though in a much weaker form. Most important, these findings provide evidence from auditory attention that supports the multimodal account originally raised by Reed et al. in 2006.

Full Text Available This paper deals with the application of new steganographic methods in postage stamp printing technology with the goal of securing them against counterfeiting. Postage stamp designs are presented which contain double information in the visible and in the infrared spectrum area. New methods include printing with process printing inks that have a continuous response in the infrared area of the spectrum. The infrared Z image cannot be produced with conventional CMYK separation in such a way that the hidden picture does not show through when looking at the print. This is the reason for introducing CMYKIR separation, with mathematical relations that respect printing ink characteristics in the RGB to CMYKIR system conversion.A mathematical model with targeted separation characteristics is proposed, with seven independent variables. It has been created as the result of optimal regression model developed on the basis of colour tone measuring for the visual and infrared spectrum. A technological procedure has been elaborated for producing and printing based on such designs. It is possible to detect the infrared image with the help of a device – the infrared ZRGB camera. Counterfeiting is impossible due to the irreversible conversion of the CMYKIR separation into the RGB system applied in contemporary scanners or cameras.

Full Text Available Many studies have revealed the influences of music, and particularly its tempo, on the autonomic nervous system (ANS and respiration patterns. Since there is the interaction between the ANS and the respiratory system, namely sympatho-respiratory coupling, it is possible that the effect of musical tempo on the ANS is modulated by the respiratory system. Therefore, we investigated the effects of the relationship between musical tempo and respiratory rate on the ANS. Fifty-two healthy people aged 18-35 years participated in this study. Their respiratory rates were controlled by using a silent electronic metronome and they listened to simple drum sounds with a constant tempo. We varied the respiratory rate-acoustic tempo combination. The respiratory rate was controlled at 15 or 20 cycles per minute (CPM and the acoustic tempo was 60 or 80 beats per minute (BPM or the environment was silent. Electrocardiograms and an elastic chest band were used to measure the heart rate and respiratory rate, respectively. The mean heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV were regarded as indices of ANS activity. We observed a significant increase in the mean heart rate and the low (0.04-0.15 Hz to high (0.15-0.40 Hz frequency ratio of HRV, only when the respiratory rate was controlled at 20 CPM and the acoustic tempo was 80 BPM. We suggest that the effect of acoustic tempo on the sympathetic tone is modulated by the respiratory system.

Neuromodulatory signaling is generally considered broad in its impact across cortex. However, variations in the characteristics of cortical circuits may introduce regionally-specific responses to diffuse modulatory signals. Features such as patterns of axonal innervation, tissue tortuosity and molecular diffusion, effectiveness of degradation pathways, subcellular receptor localization, and patterns of receptor expression can lead to local modification of modulatory inputs. We propose that modulatory compartments exist in cortex and can be defined by variation in structural features of local circuits. Further, we argue that these compartments are responsible for local regulation of neuromodulatory tone. For the cholinergic system, these modulatory compartments are regions of cortical tissue within which signaling conditions for acetylcholine are relatively uniform, but between which signaling can vary profoundly. In the visual system, evidence for the existence of compartments indicates that cholinergic modulation likely differs across the visual pathway. We argue that the existence of these compartments calls for thinking about cholinergic modulation in terms of finer-grained control of local cortical circuits than is implied by the traditional view of this system as a diffuse modulator. Further, an understanding of modulatory compartments provides an opportunity to better understand and perhaps correct signal modifications that lead to pathological states.

This study was designed to investigate the feasibility of applying tone-ABRs in the nursery and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and to provide normative tone-ABR data from neonates. Normative tone-ABR latency data were determined. The study obtained intensity series of tone-ABRs from thirty preterm neonates and twenty full-term neonates who had confirmed normal peripheral auditory function after passing both an OAE and ABR screening examination. ABRs were collected in response to 500, 1500, and 4000 Hz tone bursts at 70, 50, 30, and 20 dB nHL. Mean wave V latencies were compared between groups, ears, and by gender. Responses to tone bursts of 20 and 30 dB nHL were detected in 97% and 100% of all ears respectively, in addition to responses to the higher-intensity stimuli. Preterm neonates' ABRs showed significantly longer latencies than those of the full-term infants. Tone-ABR evaluation was found to be both feasible and reliable as a measure of auditory function in neonates.

Electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves with rising or falling frequency variations have been studied intensively because of their effects on energetic particles in the Earth's magnetosphere. We develop an automated classification method of EMIC events based on the characteristics of frequency variations. We report some basic statistical properties of frequency variations in EMIC waves observed over 5-10 RE by three Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms probes from January 2012 to December 2014. We clarify whether rising tones or falling tones are observed in each chosen 20 min time segment. In the present analysis, we find that the occurrence rate of EMIC rising or falling tone events is more than 30% of the total EMIC wave events. The dayside magnetosphere is a preferential region for the EMIC frequency variations. The occurrence rate of rising tone events is slightly greater than that of falling tone events. We examine the relation between the frequency characteristics and the magnetospheric conditions. The solar wind pressure strongly controls the occurrence rates of frequency variations. We also calculate ranges of frequency variations. Large-amplitude EMIC waves tend to have wider frequency variations, and the range of frequency variation is largest around the prenoon region. In addition, rapid variations in wave amplitudes called "subpacket structures" are found in 70% of the EMIC rising or falling tone events in the dayside region. Subpacket structures appear mainly in large-amplitude EMIC rising or falling tones. These features are consistent with nonlinear wave growth theory.

Neurological literature indicates the existence of children with low postural tone without association with central nervous system damage. This fact induces to think about mechanisms, which allow these children to maintain upright posture. There is a suspicion that compensatory mechanism included in this process, enables to achieve upright posture, but at expense of body posture quality. Observations of children's developmental stages caused determination of some postural tone area, which comprise both children with normotonia and with low postural tone without characteristics of central nervous system (CNS) damage. Set of specific qualities allows determination of two types of low postural tone: spastoidal and atetoidal type. Spastoidal type is characterized by deep trunk muscles (local) low postural tone compensated by excessive tension of superficial muscles (global). Atetoidal type includes children with low postural tone in both deep and superficial muscles. At inefficient active subsystem, verticalization proceeds at excessive use of passive subsystem qualities, that is meniscus, ligament, bone shape, and muscles passive features. From neurodevelopmental point of view compensatory mechanisms can be used in children with low postural tone in order to achieve upright posture, but at expense of body posture quality.

A pseudo-strain energy function (pseudo-SEF) describing the biomechanical properties of large conduit arteries under the influence of vascular smooth muscle (VSM) tone is proposed. In contrast to previous models that include the effects of smooth muscle contraction through generation of an active stress, in this study we consider the vascular muscle as a structural element whose contribution to load bearing is modulated by the contraction. This novel pseudo-SEF models not only arterial mechanics at maximal VSM contraction but also the myogenic contraction of the VSM in response to local increases in stretch. The proposed pseudo-SEF was verified with experimentally obtained pressure-radius curves and zero-stress state configurations from rat carotid arteries displaying distinct differences in VSM tone: arteries from normotensive rats displaying minimal VSM tone and arteries from hypertensive rats exhibiting significant VSM tone. The pressure-radius curves were measured in three different VSM states: fully relaxed, maximally contracted, and normal VSM tone. The model fitted the experimental data very well (r2 > 0.99) in both the normo- and hypertensive groups for all three states of VSM activation. The pseudo-SEF was used to illustrate the localized reduction of circumferential stress in the arterial wall due to normal VSM tone, suggesting that the proposed pseudo-SEF can be of general utility for describing stress distribution not only under passive VSM conditions, as most SEFs proposed so far, but also under physiological and pathological conditions with varying levels of VSM tone.

The active noise control of discrete tones generated in a uniform jet flow on a two-dimensional wing was investigated. Discrete tone noise is generated by a self-excited feedback loop formed by the acoustic field and the unstable boundary layer. In this work, we conducted an active control experiment using a flap driven by piezoceramic levers, which can vibrate with a phase delayed from the velocity fluctuation signal on the suction side. When the flap motion lags the pressure fluctuation at the trailing edge with a phase angle of 180 degrees, it was found that the discrete tone noise was reduced by a maximum of about 7 dB, the flow fluctuation intensities in the boundary layer on the suction side were reduced by about half, and the correlation area of the flow fluctuation at the trailing edge decreased. This confirms that discrete tone generation is caused by the feedback loop and that the discrete tone generation is actively reduced by trailing edge control. 10 refs., 14 figs.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children's recall of tones, numbers, and words was supported by a common temporal sequencing mechanism; whether children's patterns of memory for tones, numbers, and nonsense words were the same despite differences in symbol systems; and whether children's recall of tones, numbers, and nonsense…

Lexical-tone languages use fundamental frequency (F0/pitch) to convey word meaning. About 41.8% of the world's languages use lexical tone (Maddieson, 2008), yet those systems are under-studied. I aim to increase our understanding of speech-sound inventory organization by extending to tone-systems a model of vowel-system organization, the Theory of…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children's recall of tones, numbers, and words was supported by a common temporal sequencing mechanism; whether children's patterns of memory for tones, numbers, and nonsense words were the same despite differences in symbol systems; and whether children's recall of tones, numbers, and nonsense…

Full Text Available Early language acquisition is potentially complicated by the presence of many sources of variability in the speech signal. A frequent example of variability is phonological alternations, which can lead to context-driven changes in the realization of a word. The aim of the current study was to investigate effects of a highly frequent yet scarcely researched type of suprasegmental phonological alternation – tone Sandhi – on early spoken word recognition. The tone Sandhi rule investigated herein involves a tone change of the first syllable in a disyllabic unit. In accordance with third tone Sandhi, when two dipping tone syllables are juxtaposed in connected speech, the first syllable is dissimilated to a high rising tone. For example, ‘flour mill’ (unaltered pre-Sandhi form [fən(214 tʂʰɑŋ(214] undergoes tonal alternation resulting in the altered post-Sandhi form [fən(35 tʂʰɑŋ(214]. In the current study, preschoolers’ sensitivity to the effects of tone Sandhi when processing familiar words was investigated via a preferential looking paradigm. Words varied in their phonological form: words that were labeled with a phonological alternation due to Sandhi (Post-Sandhi; words that were labeled with an unaltered form when tone Sandhi was licensed (Pre-Sandhi; non-Sandhi words correctly produced (Correct Pronunciation; and words labeled with a phonological alternation of tone not associated with Sandhi rules (Mispronunciation. Post-Sandhi forms and correct pronunciations were associated with visual referents with comparable strength, with only a subtle processing cost observed for post-Sandhi forms in the time course of lexical selection. Likewise, pre-Sandhi forms and true mispronunciations were rejected as labels for visual references with comparable strength, with only subtle differences observed in the time course of lexical selection. Findings are discussed in terms of their impact on prevailing theories of lexical representation.

Exploring autonomic nervous system (ANS) changes during hypnosis is critical for understanding the nature and extent of the hypnotic phenomenon and for identifying the mechanisms underlying the effects of hypnosis in different medical conditions. To assess ANS changes during hypnosis, electrodermal activity and pulse rate variability (PRV) were measured in 121 young adults. Participants either received hypnotic induction (hypnosis condition) or listened to music (control condition), and both ...

This study is aimed at elucidating (a) whether heart rate (HR) complexity measures are associated with the attentional orienting function, and (b) which of these measures better predicts orienting efficiency indexes. Vagal tone, sample entropy, scaling exponents ?1 and ?2, and fractal dimension (FD) were calculated in HR time series (n=109). Vagal tone, entropy, and FD were positively associated with orienting, while this association was negative for ?2. These results show that HR scaling properties, which underlie the role of vagal tone and reflect allometric control mechanisms, are associated with orienting deficits. FD was the best predictor of attentional orienting.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship among surface acting, mental health, and positive group affective tone. According to the prior theory, this study attempts to establish a comprehensive research framework among these variables, and furthermore tests the moderating effect of positive group affective tone. Data were collected from 435 employees in 52 service industrial companies by questionnaire, and this study conducted multilevel analysis. The results showed that surface acting will negatively affect the mental health. In addition, the positive group affective tone have significant moderating effect on the relationship among surface acting and mental health. Finally, this study discusses managerial implications and highlights future research suggestions.

A digital tone extractor which monitors the phase integrity of a VLBI recording system in real time was developed. The digital tone extractor monitors phase calibrator tones injected at the antenna and tracks their phase as a function of time. It is capable of maintaining 0.001 cycle phase accuracy over the course of a VLBI experiment in accordance with the accuracy requirements of centimeter VLBI work. This real time VLBI system monitor is a safeguard against most instrumental breakdowns and operator errors.

A classical twin study was used to estimate the magnitude of genetic and environmental influences on four measurements of within-person variability: dominance flux, warmth flux, spin and pulse. Flux refers to the variability of an individual’s interpersonal dominance and warmth. Spin measures changes in the tone of interpersonal styles and pulse measures changes in the intensity of interpersonal styles. Daily reports of interpersonal styles were collected from 494 same-sex female twins (142 m...

Full Text Available Melinda Magyari,1,3 Nils Koch-Henriksen,1,2 Per Soelberg Sørensen3 1Danish Multiple Sclerosis Registry, Department of Neurology, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, 2Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Clinical Institute, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, 3Danish Multiple Sclerosis Center, Department of Neurology, Rigshospitalet, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Aim of the database: The Danish Multiple Sclerosis Treatment Register (DMSTR serves as a clinical quality register, enabling the health authorities to monitor the quality of the disease-modifying treatment, and it is an important data source for epidemiological research. Study population: The DMSTR includes all patients with multiple sclerosis who had been treated with disease-modifying drugs since 1996. At present, more than 8,400 patients have been registered in this database. Data are continuously entered online into a central database from all sites in Denmark at start and at regular visits. Main variables: Include age, sex, onset year and year of the diagnosis, basic clinical information, and information about treatment, side effects, and relapses. Descriptive data: Notification is done at treatment start, and thereafter at every scheduled clinical visit 3 months after treatment start, and thereafter every 6 months. The longitudinally collected information about the disease activity and side effects made it possible to investigate the clinical efficacy and adverse events of different disease-modifying therapies. Conclusion: The database contributed to a certain harmonization of treatment procedures in Denmark and will continue to be a major factor in terms of quality in clinical praxis, research and monitoring of adverse events, and plays an important role in research. Keywords: multiple sclerosis, epidemiology, immunomodulatory treatment, neutralizing antibodies, observational studies, registry research, disease modifying therapy

The project KoRegIT (funded by TMF e.V.) aimed to develop a generic catalog of requirements for research networks like cohort studies and registers (KoReg). The catalog supports such kind of research networks to build up and to manage their organizational and IT infrastructure. To make transparent the complex relationships between requirements, which are described in use cases from a given text catalog. By analyzing and modeling the requirements a better understanding and optimizations of the catalog are intended. There are two subgoals: a) to investigate one cohort study and two registers and to model the current state of their IT infrastructure; b) to analyze the current state models and to find simplifications within the generic catalog. Processing the generic catalog was performed by means of text extraction, conceptualization and concept mapping. Then methods of enterprise architecture planning (EAP) are used to model the extracted information. To work on objective a) questionnaires are developed by utilizing the model. They are used for semi-structured interviews, whose results are evaluated via qualitative content analysis. Afterwards the current state was modeled. Objective b) was done by model analysis. A given generic text catalog of requirements was transferred into a model. As result of objective a) current state models of one existing cohort study and two registers are created and analyzed. An optimized model called KoReg-reference-model is the result of objective b). It is possible to use methods of EAP to model requirements. This enables a better overview of the partly connected requirements by means of visualization. The model based approach also enables the analysis and comparison of the empirical data from the current state models. Information managers could reduce the effort of planning the IT infrastructure utilizing the KoReg-reference-model. Modeling the current state and the generation of reports from the model, which could be used as

algorithm. The solution strategy consists in establishing a harmonisation process for the population targets, which combined with a linear programming approach, is applied to generate a consistent target representation. The model approach is implemented and tested on Danish administrative register data....... A test on historical census data shows that a 2006 population could be predicted by a 1994 population with an overall percentage deviation of 5–6% given that targets were known. It is also indicated that the deviation is approximately a linear function of the length of the forecast period....

A mesothelioma register was initiated in France in 1975 to record pathologists' cases diagnosed since 1965. Histories of asbestos exposure have been recorded using a standardized questionnaire. Tumor was located in the pleura in 96% of cases. Age at death was lower for the mesothelioma group than for the general population. A linear increase of annual incidence since 1965 has been observed. Mapping of cases showed irregular distribution with areas without any case. Distribution of cases according to asbestos exposure was the following: definite occupational history 50%, definite non-occupational 3%, possible occupational 31%, undiscovered 16%.

@@ In September 1999, the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board of the China State Administration for In-dustry and Commerce (SAIC) made its fi-nal decision on revocation of the "Wangsheng" trademark: the ground for the revocation raised by Hitachi Maxell Ltd.(Hitachi) that the Shenzhen Hua Yuan In-dustrial (Group) Co., Ltd. (Hua Yuan) has registered, by improper means, the "Wansheng" trademark no. 592880 for Class 9 floppy and magnetic disks and no.870819 for Class 9 battery are tenable and the trademark is revoked.

Full Text Available Clustering has become a common trend in very long instruction words (VLIW architecture to solve the problem of area, energy consumption, and design complexity. Register-file-connected clustered (RFCC VLIW architecture uses the mechanism of global register file to accomplish the inter-cluster data communications, thus eliminating the performance and energy consumption penalty caused by explicit inter-cluster data move operations in traditional bus-connected clustered (BCC VLIW architecture. However, the limit number of access ports to the global register file has become an issue which must be well addressed; otherwise the performance and energy consumption would be harmed. In this paper, we presented compiler optimization techniques for an RFCC VLIW architecture called Lily, which is designed for encryption systems. These techniques aim at optimizing performance and energy consumption for Lily architecture, through appropriate manipulation of the code generation process to maintain a better management of the accesses to the global register file. All the techniques have been implemented and evaluated. The result shows that our techniques can significantly reduce the penalty of performance and energy consumption due to access port limitation of global register file.

The author introduces the design of programmable pulse generator that is based on a micro-controller and controlled by RS232 interface of personal computer. The whole system has good stability. The pulse generator can produce TTL pulse and analog pulse. The pulse frequency can be selected by EPLD. The voltage amplitude and pulse width of analog pulse can be adjusted by analog switches and digitally-controlled potentiometers. The software development tools of computer is National Instruments LabView5.1. The front panel of this virtual instrumentation is intuitive and easy-to-use. Parameters can be selected and changed conveniently by knob and slide

Recently, there is an increasing use of CORBA implementation indeveloping mult idatabase systems. MIND and Panorama are some of the examples of multidatabase prototypes that have been implemented on the top of CORBA compliant namely Obje ctBroker and VisiBroker respectively. They both aim to achieve interoperability among Oracle, Sybase and other different DBMSs through the registration of these DBMSs to them using CORBA. This registration to a CORBA-based multidatabase sy stem offers an advanced way in achieving interoperability.We first introduce Panorama multidatabase system and discuss the basic implementation decisions in registering different DBMSs using the CORBA co mpliant ORB, namely VisiBroker to this system. Then, it aims to discuss the method we've used in registering different DBMSs to our designed multidataba se system-Panorama. A detailed discussion about the registration of Oracle8 and Sybase is given. And finally, a conclusion and the future work for this system h ave been given.

Pitch variation is pervasive in speech, regardless of the language to which infants are exposed. Lexical tone is influenced by general sensitivity to pitch. We examined whether the development in lexical tone perception may develop in parallel with perception of pitch in other cognitive domains namely music. Using a visual fixation paradigm, 100 and one 4- and 12-month-old Dutch infants were tested on their discrimination of Chinese rising and dipping lexical tones as well as comparable three-note musical pitch contours. The 4-month-old infants failed to show a discrimination effect in either condition, whereas the 12-month-old infants succeeded in both conditions. These results suggest that lexical tone perception may reflect and relate to general pitch perception abilities, which may serve as a basis for developing more complex language and musical skills. PMID:28337157

Some handbooks and human factors design guides have recommended that a voice warning should be preceded by a tone to attract attention to the warning. As far as can be determined from a search of the literature, no experimental evidence supporting this exists. A fixed-base simulator flown by airline pilots was used to test the hypothesis that the total 'system-time' to respond to a synthesized voice cockpit warning would be longer when the message was preceded by a tone because the voice itself was expected to perform both the alerting and the information transfer functions. The simulation included realistic ATC radio voice communications, synthesized engine noise, cockpit conversation, and realistic flight routes. The effect of a tone before a voice warning was to lengthen response time; that is, responses were slower with an alerting tone. Lengthening the voice warning with another work, however, did not increase response time.

People with complex communication needs who use speech-generating devices have very little expressive control over their tone of voice. Despite its importance in human interaction, the issue of tone of voice remains all but absent from AAC research and development however. In this paper, we describe three interdisciplinary projects, past, present and future: The critical design collection Six Speaking Chairs has provoked deeper discussion and inspired a social model of tone of voice; the speculative concept Speech Hedge illustrates challenges and opportunities in designing more expressive user interfaces; the pilot project Tonetable could enable participatory research and seed a research network around tone of voice. We speculate that more radical interactions might expand frontiers of AAC and disrupt speech technology as a whole.

.... Differently from private companies’ theoretical bias, the main suggested approach implies the initial establishment of a strong, transactional-based tone at the top as the main tool to fight military corruption...

The perceptual results of Plomp and Levelt [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 38, 548-560 (1965)] for the sensory dissonance of a pair of pure tones are used to estimate the dissonance of pairs of piano tones. By using the spectra of tones measured for a real piano, the effect of the inharmonicity of the tones is included. This leads to a prediction for how the tuning of this piano should deviate from an ideal equal tempered scale so as to give the smallest sensory dissonance and hence give the most pleasing tuning. The results agree with the well known "Railsback stretch," the average tuning curve produced by skilled piano technicians. The authors' analysis thus gives a quantitative explanation of the magnitude of the Railsback stretch in terms of the human perception of dissonance.

In high level synthesis, Scheduling is an important stage which assigns each operation appeared in a data flow graph to a specific control step, of which results influence the design quality directly. This paper describes a scheduling approach for pipelined datapaths. Since few previous approaches estimate the inter connection cost between registers (register-to-register cost), our approach introduces a datapath model with the interconnection between registers across buses, and minimizes the total hardware cost including the register-to-register cost with the Force-Directed Scheduling. 10 refs., 11 figs., 4 tabs.

Many registers containing routine medical information have been developed for research and surveillance purposes. In epidemiological research assessment of endpoints is often conducted via registers. In the present study we validated stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA) diagnoses...

Stylistic analysis refers to the linguistic approach to literature.Stylistics will mainly focus on the register theory,taking Charles Dickens' masterpiece Oliver Twist as a good example to demonstrate how the register theory is embodied in the work.

Stylistic analysis refers to the linguistic approach to literature.Stylistics will mainly focus on the register theory,taking Charles Dickens’ masterpiece Oliver Twist as a good example to demonstrate how the register theory is embodied in the work.

Background: Melasma still presents as a difficult entity to treat, especially in the Asian skin phe-notype. Recently laser toning with the Q-switched Nd:YAG has attracted attention. The present study investigated the efficacy of Q-switched Nd:YAG laser toning for melasma, with a histopathological comparison with the Q-switched ruby laser. Subjects and Methods: Eight Japanese females (41–57 yr, mean 52.5 yr) with Fitzpatrick skin type III and bilateral melasma participated in the study. One half of each subject's face (randomly chosen) was treated with Q-switched 1064 nm Nd:YAG laser toning (pulse width 5–20 ns; spot size, 6 mm diameter; fluence, 3.0 J/cm2, 5–7 passes, once/week, 4 weeks: QS:YAG group), and the contralateral half with a single treatment using a Q-switched ruby laser (694.5 nm, pulse width 20 ns, spot size 4 mm diameter; fluence 4.0 J/cm2, 1 pass with approximately 20% overlap: QS:Ruby group). Skin biopsies were taken immediately after the 4th Nd:YAG session and the single ruby session, and histopathological comparison was performed with light- and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Results: Improvement in melasma pigmentation was seen in both the QS:YAG- and QS:Ruby-treat-ed sides, and this was well-maintained in the QS:YAG group. Ultrastructurally, melanin granules were destroyed in both groups, but there was considerably more morphological epidermal and dermal damage in the QS:Ruby specimens compared with minimal epidermal disruption and cellular damage in the QS:YAG specimens. Conclusions: Q-switched 1064 nm Nd:YAG laser toning offered superior results in the treatment of melasma in the Japanese skin type compared with the Q-switched ruby laser, both ultrastructurally with less immediately post-treatment cellular damage and macroscopically, and a longer recurrence-free interval. PMID:24610976

Full Text Available Recognizing emotion is an evolutionary imperative. An early stage of auditory scene analysis involves the perceptual grouping of acoustic features, which can be based on both temporal coincidence and spectral features such as perceived pitch. Perceived pitch, or fundamental frequency (F0, is an especially salient cue for differentiating affective intent through speech intonation (prosody. We hypothesized that: 1 simple frequency modulated (FM tone abstractions, based on the parameters of actual prosodic stimuli, would be reliably classified as representing differing emotional categories; and 2 that such differences would yield significant mismatch negativities (MMNs - an index of preattentive deviance detection within the auditory environment. We constructed a set of FM tones that approximated the F0 mean and variation of reliably-recognized happy and neutral prosodic stimuli. These stimuli were presented to 13 subjects using a passive listening oddball paradigm. We additionally included stimuli with no frequency modulation (FM and FM tones with identical carrier frequencies but differing modulation depths as control conditions. Following electrophysiological recording, subjects were asked to identify the sounds they heard as happy, sad, angry or neutral. We observed that FM tones abstracted from happy and no expression speech stimuli elicited MMNs. Post-hoc behavioral testing revealed that subjects reliably identified the FM tones in a consistent manner. Finally, we also observed that FM tones and no-FM tones elicited equivalent MMNs. MMNs to FM tones that differentiate affect suggests that these abstractions may be sufficient to characterize prosodic distinctions, and that these distinctions can be represented in pre-attentive auditory sensory memory.

Full Text Available OBJECTIVES: to determine if there are differences in cardiac vagal tone values in non-obese healthy, adult men with and without unfavorable anthropometric characteristics. INTRODUCTION: It is well established that obesity reduces cardiac vagal tone. However, it remains unknown if decreases in cardiac vagal tone can be observed early in non-obese healthy, adult men presenting unfavorable anthropometric characteristics. METHODS: Among 1688 individuals assessed between 2004 and 2008, we selected 118 non-obese (BMI <30 kg/m², healthy men (no known disease conditions or regular use of relevant medications, aged between 20 and 77 years old (42 ± 12-years-old. Their evaluation included clinical examination, anthropometric assessment (body height and weight, sum of six skinfolds, waist circumference and somatotype, a 4-second exercise test to estimate cardiac vagal tone and a maximal cardiopulmonary exercise test to exclude individuals with myocardial ischemia. The same physician performed all procedures. RESULTS: A lower cardiac vagal tone was found for the individuals in the higher quintiles - unfavorable anthropometric characteristics - of BMI (p=0.005, sum of six skinfolds (p=0.037 and waist circumference (p<0.001. In addition, the more endomorphic individuals also presented a lower cardiac vagal tone (p=0.023, while an ectomorphic build was related to higher cardiac vagal tone values as estimated by the 4-second exercise test (r=0.23; p=0.017. CONCLUSIONS: Non-obese and healthy adult men with unfavorable anthropometric characteristics tend to present lower cardiac vagal tone levels. Early identification of this trend by simple protocols that are non-invasive and risk-free, using select anthropometric characteristics, may be clinically useful in a global strategy to prevent cardiovascular disease.

Advanced aircraft designs such as the hybrid wing body, in conjunction with open rotor engines, may allow for significant improvements in the environmental impact of aviation. System noise assessments allow for the prediction of the aircraft noise of such designs while they are still in the conceptual phase. Due to significant requirements of computational methods, these predictions still rely on experimental data to account for the interaction of the open rotor tones with the hybrid wing body airframe. Recently, multiple aircraft system noise assessments have been conducted for hybrid wing body designs with open rotor engines. These assessments utilized measured benchmark data from a Propulsion Airframe Aeroacoustic interaction effects test. The measured data demonstrated airframe shielding of open rotor tonal and broadband noise with legacy F7/A7 open rotor blades. Two methods are proposed for improving the use of these data on general open rotor designs in a system noise assessment. The first, direct difference, is a simple octave band subtraction which does not account for tone distribution within the rotor acoustic signal. The second, tone matching, is a higher-fidelity process incorporating additional physical aspects of the problem, where isolated rotor tones are matched by their directivity to determine tone-by-tone shielding. A case study is conducted with the two methods to assess how well each reproduces the measured data and identify the merits of each. Both methods perform similarly for system level results and successfully approach the experimental data for the case study. The tone matching method provides additional tools for assessing the quality of the match to the data set. Additionally, a potential path to improve the tone matching method is provided.

Neuropsychologists have debated over whether the processing of segmental and suprasegmental units involves different neural mechanisms. Focusing on the production of Chinese lexical tones (suprasegmental units) and vowels (segmental units), this study used the adaptation paradigm to investigate a possible neural dissociation for tone and vowel production. Ten native Chinese speakers were asked to name Chinese characters and pinyin (Romanized phonetic system for Chinese language) that varied i...

The use of a digital micromirror device (DMD) in laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) is reviewed. Combining this technique with high-viscosity donor ink (silver nanopaste) results in laser-printed features that are highly congruent in shape and size to the incident laser beam spatial profile. The DMD empowers LIFT to become a highly parallel, rapidly reconfigurable direct-write technology. By adapting half-toning techniques to the DMD bitmap image, the laser transfer threshold fluence for 10 μm features can be reduced using an edge-enhanced beam profile. The integration of LIFT with this beam-shaping technique allows the printing of complex large-area patterns with a single laser pulse.

Many registers containing routine medical information have been developed for research and surveillance purposes. In epidemiological research assessment of endpoints is often conducted via registers. In the present study we validated stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA) diagnoses in the Dan......Many registers containing routine medical information have been developed for research and surveillance purposes. In epidemiological research assessment of endpoints is often conducted via registers. In the present study we validated stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA) diagnoses...

Full Text Available Vibeke Backer,1 Jesper Lykkegaard,2 Uffe Bodtger,3,4 Lone Agertoft,5 Lene Korshoej,6 Elvira Vaclavik Braüner7,8 1Department of Respiratory Medicine L, Bispebjerg Frederiskberg University Hospital, Copenhagen, 2Research Unit of General Practice, Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, 3Department of Respiratory Medicine, Næstved Hospital, Næstved, 4Institute of Regional Health Research, University of Southern Denmark, 5Hans Christian Andersen Children's Hospital, Odense University Hospital, Odense, 6Competence Centre for Clinical Quality and Information Technology West (KCKS West, Aarhus, 7Research Center for Prevention and Health, Center for Health, Glostrup Hospital, Capital Region of Denmark, Glostrup, 8Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Capital Region of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark Aim of the database: Asthma is the most prevalent chronic disease in children, adolescents, and young adults. In Denmark (with a population of 5.6 million citizens, >400,000 persons are prescribed antiasthmatic medication annually. However, undiagnosed cases, dubious diagnoses, and poor asthma management are probably common. The Danish National Database for Asthma (DNDA was established in 2015. The aim of the DNDA was to collect the data on all patients treated for asthma in Denmark and to monitor asthma occurrence, the quality of diagnosis, and management. Study population: Persons above the age of 6 years, with a specific focus on 6–44 years, are included. The DNDA links three existing nationwide registries of administrative records in the Danish health care system: the National Patient Register, the National Health Insurance Services Register, and the National Prescription Registry. For each year, the inclusion criteria are a second purchase of asthma prescription medicine within a 2-year period (National Prescription Registry or a diagnosis of asthma (National Patient

Full Text Available Electronic correspondence is a highly dynamic genre within the business world in which Register Variation (RV is frequently used as a tool to improve communication but it often can lead to misunderstanding. In order to shed some light on this still unexplored area, the present study firstly offers a practical approach to classify and analyse RV within professional communication. After this, it reviews previous studies on email writing to apply their findings to this approach and, in the third part of the study, a corpus of recent business emails in English is analysed to examine how the key parameters of RV are currently used within this genre. The results will show that, not only the context, but also the roles and intentions of the senders influence an email’s register, often causing internal oscillations between different registers within the same text.La correspondencia electrónica es un género comunicativo de especial dinamismo dentro del mundo empresarial en el que la variación de registros se utiliza como herramienta para mejorar la interacción y las relaciones entre los interlocutores, pero que a menudo también genera confusión y malentendidos. Para aportar luz a esta área, el presente trabajo ofrece una aproximación práctica para la clasificación y el análisis de los registros lingüísticos dentro de la comunicación profesional. A continuación, revisa los estudios previos sobre este género con el fin de adaptar sus resultados a la teoría propuesta. Finalmente, se analiza un corpus de mensajes escritos en inglés para examinar el funcionamiento de los registros dentro de este género. Los resultados mostrarán que, no solo el contexto situacional, sino sobre todo los roles e intenciones de los emisores determinan el registro de un mensaje, provocando a menudo oscilación interna entre varios registros dentro del mismo texto.

In this paper, the distinctive tones of Thai in running speech are studied. We present rules to synthesize F0 contours of Thai tones in running speech by using the generative model of F0 contours. Along with our method, the pitch contours of Thai polysyllabic words, both disyllabic and trisyllabic words, were analyzed. The coarticulation effect of Thai tones in running speech were found. Based on the analysis of the polysyllabic words using this model, rules are derived and applied to synthesize Thai polysyllabic tone sequences. We performed listening tests to evaluate intelligibility of the rules for Thai tones generation. The average intelligibility scores became 98.8%, and 96.6% for disyllabic and trisyllabic words, respectively. From these result, the rule of the tones' generation was shown to be effective. Furthermore, we constructed the connecting rules to synthesize suprasegmental F0 contours using the trisyllable training rules' parameters. The parameters of the first, the third, and the second syllables were selected and assigned to the initial, the ending, and the remaining syllables in a sentence, respectively. Even such a simple rule, the synthesized phrases/senetences were completely identified in listening tests. The MOSs (Mean Opinion Score) was 3.50 while the original and analysis/synthesis samples were 4.82 and 3.59, respectively.

Absolute pitch (AP), the ability to name a musical note in the absence of a reference note, is extremely rare in the U.S. and Europe, and its genesis is unclear. The prevalence of AP was examined among students in an American music conservatory as a function of age of onset of musical training, ethnicity, and fluency in speaking a tone language. Taking those of East Asian ethnicity, the performance level on a test of AP was significantly higher among those who spoke a tone language very fluently compared with those who spoke a tone language fairly fluently and also compared with those who were not fluent in speaking a tone language. The performance level of this last group did not differ significantly from that of Caucasian students who spoke only nontone language. Early onset of musical training was associated with enhanced performance, but this did not interact with the effect of language. Further analyses showed that the results could not be explained by country of early music education. The findings support the hypothesis that the acquisition of AP by tone language speakers involves the same process as occurs in the acquisition of a second tone language.

This study investigates the coordination of boundary tones as a function of stress and pitch accent. Boundary tone coordination has not been experimentally investigated previously, and the effect of prominence on this coordination, and whether it is lexical (stress-driven) or phrasal (pitch accent-driven) in nature is unclear. We assess these issues using a variety of syntactic constructions to elicit different boundary tones in an Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) study of Greek. The results indicate that the onset of boundary tones co-occurs with the articulatory target of the final vowel. This timing is further modified by stress, but not by pitch accent: boundary tones are initiated earlier in words with non-final stress than in words with final stress regardless of accentual status. Visual data inspection reveals that phrase-final words are followed by acoustic pauses during which specific articulatory postures occur. Additional analyses show that these postures reach their achievement point at a stable temporal distance from boundary tone onsets regardless of stress position. Based on these results and parallel findings on boundary lengthening reported elsewhere, a novel approach to prosody is proposed within the context of Articulatory Phonology: rather than seeing prosodic (lexical and phrasal) events as independent entities, a set of coordination relations between them is suggested. The implications of this account for prosodic architecture are discussed. PMID:25300341

Do individuals differ in how efficiently they process non-native sounds? To what extent do these differences relate to individual variability in sound-learning aptitude? We addressed these questions by assessing the sound-learning abilities of Dutch native speakers as they were trained on non-native tone contrasts. We used fMRI repetition suppression to the non-native tones to measure participants' neuronal processing efficiency before and after training. Although all participants improved in tone identification with training, there was large individual variability in learning performance. A repetition suppression effect to tone was found in the bilateral inferior frontal gyri (IFGs) before training. No whole-brain effect was found after training; a region-of-interest analysis, however, showed that, after training, repetition suppression to tone in the left IFG correlated positively with learning. That is, individuals who were better in learning the non-native tones showed larger repetition suppression in this area. Crucially, this was true even before training. These findings add to existing evidence that the left IFG plays an important role in sound learning and indicate that individual differences in learning aptitude stem from differences in the neuronal efficiency with which non-native sounds are processed.

Whistler-mode chorus plays an important role in the radiation belt electron dynamics. In the frequency-time spectrogram, chorus often appears as a hiss-like band and/or a series of short-lived (up to ˜1 s) discrete elements. Here we present some rarely reported chorus emissions with long-lived (up to 25 s) oscillating tones observed by the Van Allen Probes in the dayside (MLT ˜9-14) midlatitude (|MLAT|>15°) region. An oscillating tone can behave either regularly or irregularly and can even transform into a nearly constant tone (with a relatively narrow frequency sweep range). We suggest that these highly coherent oscillating tones were generated naturally rather than being related to some artificial VLF transmitters. Possible scenarios for the generation of the oscillating tone chorus are as follows: (1) being nonlinearly triggered by the accompanying hiss-like bands or (2) being caused by the modulation of the wave source. The details of the generation and evolution of such a long-lived oscillating tone chorus need to be investigated both theoretically and experimentally in the future.

The research aim is to investigate that how pitch and duration affect the perception of the neutral tone in standard Chinese and that which one of the two factors is more important.A psycho-acoustic experiment was conducted, in which the listening stimuli consisted of 15 groups of disyllabic words, and the pitches and durations of the two syllables in each of the words were artificially controlled. Thirty-three standard Chinese native speakers participated in a forced-choice task to judge if the second syllables of the words they heard carried the neutral tone or the normal tones. The results of the experiment indicated that, (1) the effects of both pitch and duration on the perception of the neutral tone are significant; (2) the effect of pitch is larger than that of duration; (3) both the Fo values of the high point in the pitch contour and the pitch contour pattern have influence on the perception. The results of the experiment were correspondent to some extent to those of the previous acoustic analyses on the neutral tone.The diversity between the results of the presented perceptual study and those of the acoustical studies implies that the acoustic features of the neutral tone that exist in natural speech while do not affect the perception may be phonologically redundant.

Full Text Available Tone mapping algorithms are used to adapt captured wide dynamic range (WDR scenes to the limited dynamic range of available display devices. Although there are several tone mapping algorithms available, most of them require manual tuning of their rendering parameters. In addition, the high complexities of some of these algorithms make it difficult to implement efficient real-time hardware systems. In this work, a real-time hardware implementation of an exponent-based tone mapping algorithm is presented. The algorithm performs a mixture of both global and local compression on colored WDR images. An automatic parameter selector has been proposed for the tone mapping algorithm in order to achieve good tone-mapped images without manual reconfiguration of the algorithm for each WDR image. Both algorithms are described in Verilog and synthesized for a field programmable gate array (FPGA. The hardware architecture employs a combination of parallelism and system pipelining, so as to achieve a high performance in power consumption, hardware resources usage and processing speed. Results show that the hardware architecture produces images of good visual quality that can be compared to software-based tone mapping algorithms. High peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR and structural similarity (SSIM scores were obtained when the results were compared with output images obtained from software simulations using MATLAB.

Previous research indicates that, under explicit instructions to listen to spoken stimuli or in speech-oriented behavioural tasks, the brain's responses to senseless pseudowords are larger than those to meaningful words; the reverse is true in non-attended conditions. These differential responses could be used as a tool to trace linguistic processes in the brain and their interaction with attention. However, as previous studies relied on explicit instructions to attend or ignore the stimuli, a technique for automatic attention modulation (i.e., not dependent on explicit instruction) would be more advantageous, especially when cooperation with instructions may not be guaranteed (e.g., neurological patients, children etc). Here we present a novel paradigm in which the stimulus context automatically draws attention to speech. In a non-attend passive auditory oddball sequence, rare words and pseudowords were presented among frequent non-speech tones of variable frequency and length. The low percentage of spoken stimuli guarantees an involuntary attention switch to them. The speech stimuli, in turn, could be disambiguated as words or pseudowords only in their end, at the last phoneme, after the attention switch would have already occurred. Our results confirmed that this paradigm can indeed be used to induce automatic shifts of attention to spoken input. At ~250ms after the stimulus onset, a P3a-like neuromagnetic deflection was registered to spoken (but not tone) stimuli indicating an involuntary attention shift. Later, after the word-pseudoword divergence point, we found a larger oddball response to pseudowords than words, best explained by neural processes of lexical search facilitated through increased attention. Furthermore, we demonstrate a breakdown of this orderly pattern of neurocognitive processes as a result of sleep deprivation. The new paradigm may thus be an efficient way to assess language comprehension processes and their dynamic interaction with those

The three variables-field, mode and tenor form the integrated system of a register which has the function of reflecting culture and language features. Via the analysis of the three dimensions of register, it intends to explore the influence of register on the formality degrees of language, so that the proper formality degrees of language are chosen during communication.

respects patients’ values, religion, customs, and spiritual beliefs. Literature however revealed that the phenomenon of spiritual care is complex and variously interpreted, and that there seems to be a lack of conceptual clarity regarding what constitutes spiritual care. A phenomenological and hermeneutic......Spiritual care perspectives of Danish Nurses The purpose of this study was to explore how Danish registered nurses understand the phenomenon of spiritual care and how their understanding impacts on their interventions with their patients. Nurses are responsible for the provision of care which...... would engage in provision of spiritual care. The participants acknowledged that their understanding of spirituality influenced their provision of spiritual care, which was recognized as a challenge requiring the nurse’s initiative and courage. Spirituality was primarily understood as a patient’s private...

Performance appraisal interviews have, over the past two decades, become a common phenomenon in nursing. Yet evidence--both anecdotal and those reported in the literature--suggest that these interviews provide minimal satisfaction and are thus not always effective. This article presents the findings of an interpretive study that explored and documented the meaning and impact of participating in performance appraisal interviews. Data gleaned from nine New Zealand registered nurses employed by a single district health board provide evidence that nurses are often disappointed by the process of performance appraisal. Although they believe in the potential value of performance appraisal interviews, they seldom experience the feedback, direction, and encouragement necessary for an effective appraisal process. Changes to the current professional development program and its accompanying performance appraisal will require skilled commitment on the part of nurses, managers, and the employing organization to improve and develop the assessment and promotion of nursing practice.

Modern computer systems have increasingly complex memory systems. Common machine models for algorithm analysis do not reflect many of the features of these systems, e.g., large register sets, lockup-free caches, cache hierarchies, associativity, cache line fetching, and streaming behavior...... on sorting performance. We introduce a new cache-conscious sorting algorithm, R-MERGE, which achieves better performance in practice over algorithms that are superior in the theoretical models. R-MERGE is designed to minimize memory stall cycles rather than cache misses by considering features common to many....... Inadequate models lead to poor algorithmic choices and an incomplete understanding of algorithm behavior on real machines.A key step toward developing better models is to quantify the performance effects of features not reflected in the models. This paper explores the effect of memory system features...

Full Text Available A pandemic expansion of diabetes mellitus (DM observed nowadays across the globe is increasingly acknowledged as a disaster by all peoples of the world. Statistical analysis indicates an annual increase in prevalence of DM in Russian Federation that had reached 3 779 423 registered patients by 01.01.2013. Besides the humanitarian aspects, DM poses severe economic challenges for this country – challenges that stem both from high mortality and growing disability rate due to limb loss, decrease in visual acuity and need for hemodialysis, plaguing many DM patients.Aim. To produce an epidemiological evaluation based on the dynamics of prevalence of diabetic retinopathy in the Russian Federation – nationwide and in individual regions – across the last 13 years.Materials and Methods. Current survey included patients from various regions of the Russian Federation that were examined during epidemiological missions conducted by the federal Endocrinology Research Centre (2000–2009, as well as National Programmes «Health» (2007 and «Diabetes – Learn In Advance» (2012–2013.Results. In the Russian Federation registered more than 630,000 patients with different stages of diabetic retinopathy. The prevalence of diabetic retinopathy among adults (18 years and older with type 1 diabetes is 35.25%, while in type 2 diabetes - 16.67%. On average, this means that almost one in five patients (17.63% with diabetes have certain eye problems.Conclusion. In summary, our data indicate a dramatic growth in the rate of diabetic ocular complications, with a particular increase in proliferative diabetic retinopathy, complicated cataract and neovascular glaucoma. These findings call for an even closer attention to early diagnostics, adequate management and, above everything else, timely prevention of ocular pathologies in patients with DM.

The aim of this register study was to investigate falls and fall injuries of inpatients 65 years and over to determine whether a causal factor of visual impairment was documented. All Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries have an increasing older population with falls and fall injuries becoming a major problem. A visual impairment can be an independent risk factor for falls but can also occur in combination with other intrinsic and extrinsic risk factors. A retrospective non-randomised register study. In 2004, all documented falls of inpatients aged 65 years and over were examined. Medical records and eye clinic records were scrutinised to identify whether any visual impairment have been documented. The majority of falls occurred between the hours of 24:00-06:00 and the inpatients most often affected were those with a visual impairment. The falls occurred in connection with movement when the inpatient was unaccompanied. Documentation in records at the medical clinic was defective and subjectively perceived visual impairment was not documented at all. Both subjective and objective visual impairment occurred in all eye clinic records. Visual impairment along with the ageing process are features affecting falls and the hospital environment needs to be adapted by improving the use of strong, contrasting colours and providing good lighting for older inpatients with visual impairment during the night time period. Hospital safety for older people with visual impairment is a concern if falls are to be reduced. Healthcare professionals need to undertake individual risk assessments to establish the degree of visual impairment of the older person so that appropriate interventions can be implemented to reduce the incidence of falls and fall injuries.

Small artery tone is a major determinant of organ tissue blood flow and of total peripheral resistance. Pathophysiological alterations in small artery function towards a more constrictive state (“small artery dysfunction”) restricts the organ’s blood supply, and increases peripheral vascular

Small artery tone is a major determinant of organ tissue blood flow and of total peripheral resistance. Pathophysiological alterations in small artery function towards a more constrictive state (“small artery dysfunction”) restricts the organ’s blood supply, and increases peripheral vascular resista

Full Text Available In asymmetric digital subscriber lines (ADSL, the available bandwidth is divided in subcarriers or tones which are assigned to the upstream and/or downstream transmission direction. To allow efficient bidirectional communication over one twisted pair, echo cancellation is required to separate upstream and downstream channels. In addition, intersymbol interference and intercarrier interference have to be reduced by means of equalization. In this paper, a computationally efficient algorithm for adaptively initializing the per-tone equalizers (PTEQ and per-tone echo cancelers (PTEC is presented. For a given number of equalizer and echo canceler taps per-tone, it was shown that the joint PTEQ/PTEC receiver structure is able to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR on each subcarrier and hence also the achievable bit rate. The proposed initialization scheme is based on a modification of the square root recursive least squares (SR-RLS algorithm to reduce computational complexity and memory requirement compared to full SR-RLS, while keeping the convergence rate acceptably fast. Our performance analysis will show that the proposed method converges in the mean and an upper bound for the step size is given. Moreover, we will indicate how the presented initialization method can be reused in several other ADSL applications.

The parasympathetic nervous system (PS) influences are critical in the autonomic control of the heart. To examine how early postnatal diet affects PS development, we used a measure of tonic PS control of cardiac activity, vagal tone, derived from resting heart rate recordings in 158 breastfed (BF), ...

Administrative registers, like hospital discharge registers and causes of death registers are used for the monitoring of disease incidences and in the follow-up studies. Obtaining reliable results requires that the diagnoses in these registers are correct and the coverage of the registers is high. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity of the Finnish hospital discharge registers and causes of death registers stroke diagnoses against the population-based FINSTROKE register. All first stroke events from the hospital discharge registers and causes of death registers from the areas covered by the FINSTROKE register were obtained for years 1993-1998 and linked to the FINSTROKE register. The sensitivity and positive predictive values were calculated. A total of 3633 stroke events, 767 fatal and 2866 non-fatal strokes, were included in the registers. The sensitivity for all first stroke events was 85%, for fatal strokes 86% and for non-fatal strokes 85%. The positive predictive values for all first strokes was 86%, for fatal strokes 92% and for non-fatal strokes 85%. The sensitivity as well as the positive predictive values for subarachnoid haemorrhage and intracerebral haemorrhage was higher than for cerebral infarctions. There were no marked differences in the sensitivity or positive predictive values between men and women. The sensitivity and the positive predictive values of the Finnish hospital discharge registers and causes of death registers are fairly good. Finnish administrative registers can be used for the monitoring of stroke incidence, but the number of cerebral infarctions should be interpreted with caution.

The aim of the current study was to characterize the brain activation in response to two modes of vestibular stimulation: skull tap and auditory tone burst. The auditory tone burst has been used in previous studies to elicit saccular Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials (VEMP) (Colebatch & Halmagyi 1992; Colebatch et al. 1994). Some researchers have reported that airconducted skull tap elicits both saccular and utricle VEMPs, while being faster and less irritating for the subjects (Curthoys et al. 2009, Wackym et al., 2012). However, it is not clear whether the skull tap and auditory tone burst elicit the same pattern of cortical activity. Both forms of stimulation target the otolith response, which provides a measurement of vestibular function independent from semicircular canals. This is of high importance for studying the vestibular disorders related to otolith deficits. Previous imaging studies have documented activity in the anterior and posterior insula, superior temporal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, pre and post central gyri, inferior frontal gyrus, and the anterior cingulate cortex in response to different modes of vestibular stimulation (Bottini et al., 1994; Dieterich et al., 2003; Emri et al., 2003; Schlindwein et al., 2008; Janzen et al., 2008). Here we hypothesized that the skull tap elicits the similar pattern of cortical activity as the auditory tone burst. Subjects put on a set of MR compatible skull tappers and headphones inside the 3T GE scanner, while lying in supine position, with eyes closed. All subjects received both forms of the stimulation, however, the order of stimulation with auditory tone burst and air-conducted skull tap was counterbalanced across subjects. Pneumatically powered skull tappers were placed bilaterally on the cheekbones. The vibration of the cheekbone was transmitted to the vestibular cortex, resulting in vestibular response (Halmagyi et al., 1995). Auditory tone bursts were also delivered for comparison. To validate

In 1997, the European Communities Confederation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EC4) set up a Register for European Specialists in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. The operation of the Register is undertaken by a Register Commission (EC4RC). During the last 12 years, mor...

to highlight the process of how migrant study populations have been established and studied in relation to different registers: The Danish Cancer Registry, the Danish Central Psychiatric Research Register, the Danish National Patient Register, the Danish National Health Service Register, the Danish Injury...... the person is an immigrant or not, and on ethnic background. Data on migration background (i.e. refugee status vs. family reunification, etc.) is more difficult to obtain and therefore less used. It has been debated if ethnicity should be registered upon using health services; however, some consider...

definitions were proposed based on record linkage between multiple registers, including registers of prescribed drugs and use of general practitioners' services. CONCLUSIONS THIS STUDY PROVIDED A CATALOG OF REGISTER-BASED DEFINITIONS FOR CHRONIC CONDITIONS FOR USE IN HEALTHCARE PLANNING AND RESEARCH, WHICH IS......INTRODUCTION: The aim of the current study was to present and discuss a broad range of register-based definitions of chronic conditions for use in register research, as well as the challenges and pitfalls when defining chronic conditions by the use of registers. MATERIALS AND METHODS......: The definitions were defined based on information from nationwide Danish public healthcare registers. Medical and epidemiological specialists identified and grouped relevant diagnosis codes that covered chronic conditions, using the International Classification System version 10 (ICD-10). Where relevant...

The method of marking tone has important values in the study of tone. The paper refers to five kinds of methods of marking tone. They are method of marking tone with symbols, method of marking tone with five degrees, method of marking tone with nine degrees, method of marking tone with dividing domains and four degrees, method of marking tone with tonal elements. Tone is characterized by sound-region features, arch features and postponing features. The above five methods respectively put emphasis on one or several features. At last we sum up the ideal principles of marking tone.%声调标调法在声调研究中具有重要的价值，其中符号标调法、五度标调法、九度标调法、分域四度制标调和调素标调法是五种比较重要的方法。根据声调所具有音区特征、曲拱特征和顺延特征，上述的五种标调法分别突出了其中的一种或几种特征。

Thirteen monolingual Mandarin-speaking children residing in the U.S. were recruited to examine their production of the four Mandarin lexical tones in monosyllabic words. A picture-naming task was used to elicit the children's productions of lexical tones in isolated words and in sentence final position. Four mothers were asked to say the same set of words to their children in a picture reading activity. The children's and the mothers' productions were recorded and low-pass filtered at 500 and 400 Hz, respectively, to eliminate phonemic and semantic information. Ten Mandarin-speaking judges were recruited to identify the children's and adults' tone productions from the filtered stimuli. Contrary to the findings of L1 research conducted in countries where Mandarin is the language of the environment, the present results revealed that the lexical tones produced by 3-year-old children acquiring Mandarin as their first language in the U.S. were not yet adultlike. Children's tone productions were more difficult to categorize than the mothers' productions. The judges had significantly more difficulty identifying children's dipping tones than the children's level tones, rising tones, or falling tones, suggesting that the dipping tone posed the most difficulties for the children.

Thirteen monolingual Mandarin-speaking children residing in the U.S. were recruited to examine their production of the four Mandarin lexical tones in monosyllabic words. A picture-naming task was used to elicit the children's productions of lexical tones in isolated words and in sentence final position. Four mothers were asked to say the same set of words to their children in a picture reading activity. The children's and the mothers' productions were recorded and low-pass filtered at 500 and 400 Hz, respectively, to eliminate phonemic and semantic information. Ten Mandarin-speaking judges were recruited to identify the children's and adults' tone productions from the filtered stimuli. Contrary to the findings of L1 research conducted in countries where Mandarin is the language of the environment, the present results revealed that the lexical tones produced by 3-year-old children acquiring Mandarin as their first language in the U.S. were not yet adultlike. Children's tone productions were more difficult to categorize than the mothers' productions. The judges had significantly more difficulty identifying children's dipping tones than the children's level tones, rising tones, or falling tones, suggesting that the dipping tone posed the most difficulties for the children.

The aims of this work are to investigate the response of the ultrasonic contrast agents (UCA) insonified by different arbitrary-shaped pulses at different acoustic pressures and concentration of the contrast agent focusing on subharmonic emission. A transmission setup was developed in order to insonify the contrast agent contained in a measurement chamber. The transmitted ultrasonic signals were generated by an arbitrary wave generator connected to a linear power amplifier able to drive a single-element transducer. The transmitted ultrasonic pulses that passed through the contrast agent-filled chamber were received by a second transducer or a hydrophone aligned with the first one. The radio frequency (RF) signals were acquired by fast echographic multiparameters multi-image novel apparatus (FEMMINA), which is an echographic platform able to acquire ultrasonic signals in a real-time modality. Three sets of ultrasonic signals were devised in order to evaluate subharmonic response of the contrast agent respect with sinusoidal burst signals used as reference pulses. A decreasing up to 30 dB in subharmonic response was detected for a Gaussian-shaped pulse; differences in subharmonic emission up to 21 dB were detected for a composite pulse (two-tone burst) for different acoustic pressures and concentrations. Results from this experimentation demonstrated that the transmitted pulse shape strongly affects subharmonic emission in spite of a second harmonic one. In particular, the smoothness of the initial portion of the shaped pulses can inhibit subharmonic generation from the contrast agents respect with a reference sinusoidal burst signal. It also was shown that subharmonic generation is influenced by the amplitude and the concentration of the contrast agent for each set of the shaped pulses. Subharmonic emissions that derive from a nonlinear mechanism involving nonlinear coupling among different oscillation modes are strongly affected by the shape of the ultrasonic

Objective: The present study was carried out to explore the tone production ability of the Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CI) by using an artificial neural network model and to examine the potential contributing factors underlining their tone production performance. The results of this study might provide useful guidelines for post-operative rehabilitation processes of pediatric CI users. Methods: Two hundred and seventy-eight prelingually deafened children who received unilateral CI participated in this study. As controls, 170 similarly-aged children with normal hearing (NH) were recruited. A total of 36 Chinese monosyllabic words were selected as the tone production targets. Vocal production samples were recorded and the fundamental frequency (F0) contour of each syllable was extracted using an auto-correlation algorithm followed by manual correction. An artificial neural network was created in MATLAB to classify the tone production. The relationships between tone production and several demographic factors were evaluated. Results: Pediatric CI users produced Mandarin tones much less accurately than did the NH children (58.8% vs. 91.5% correct). Tremendous variability in tone production performance existed among the CI children. Tones 2 and 3 were produced less accurately than tones 1 and 4 for both groups. For the CI group, all tones when in error tended to be judged as tone 1. The tone production accuracy was negatively correlated with age at implantation and positively correlated with CI use duration with correlation coefficients (r) of -0.215 (P=0.003) and 0.203 (P=0.005), respectively. Age was one of the determinants of tonal ability for NH children. Conclusions: For children with severe to profound hearing loss, early implantation and persistent use of CI are beneficial to their tone production development. Artificial neural network is a convenient and reliable assessment tool for the development of tonal ability of hearing

This thesis uses acoustic measurements as a basis for the phonological analysis of the interaction of tone with voicing and foot structure in Kera (a Chadic language). In both tone spreading and vowel harmony, the iambic foot acts as a domain for spreading. Further evidence for the foot comes from measurements of duration, intensity and vowel quality. Kera is unusual in combining a tone system with a partially independent metrical system based on iambs. In words containing more than one foot, the foot is the tone bearing unit (TBU), but in shorter words, the TBU is the syllable. In perception and production experiments, results show that Kera speakers, unlike English and French, use the fundamental frequency as the principle cue to 'Voicing" contrast. Voice onset time (VOT) has only a minor role. Historically, tones probably developed from voicing through a process of tonogenesis, but synchronically, the feature voice is no longer contrastive and VOT is used in an enhancing role. Some linguists have claimed that Kera is a key example for their controversial theory of long-distance voicing spread. But as voice is not part of Kera phonology, this thesis gives counter-evidence to the voice spreading claim. An important finding from the experiments is that the phonological grammars are different between village women, men moving to town and town men. These differences are attributed to French contact. The interaction between Kera tone and voicing and contact with French have produced changes from a 2-way voicing contrast, through a 3-way tonal contrast, to a 2-way voicing contrast plus another contrast with short VOT. These diachronic and synchronic tone/voicing facts are analysed using laryngeal features and Optimality Theory. This thesis provides a body of new data, detailed acoustic measurements, and an analysis incorporating current theoretical issues in phonology, which make it of interest to Africanists and theoreticians alike.

Conclusion This study demonstrated excellent hearing recovery following the combined treatment of diuretic and oral steroid, and electrocochleography (ECoG) was significantly higher than normal side. This study reports characteristics of acute low-tone hearing loss (ALHL) that show the greater low-tone hearing loss, the higher ECoG, and excellent recovery, even-though low-tone hearing loss is worse, which can be different compared with sudden deafness. Objective To analyze ALHL without vertigo, this study compared the ALHL group with all patients exhibiting low-tone hearing loss and ear fullness. Hearing changes and vestibular functions were analyzed. Materials and methods ALHL was defined as a mean hearing loss of ≥ 30 dB at 125, 250, and 500 Hz, and ≤ 20 dB at 2, 4, and 8 kHz. From 156 cases of low-tone hearing loss of more than 10 dB without vertigo, 31 met the ALHL criteria and were subjected to audio-vestibular assessments including PTA, ECoG, vestibular evoked myogenic potential (VEMP) testing, and caloric testing. Results In ALHL, low-tone hearing loss was 42.7 ± 9.5 dB, and 83.9% of ALHL significantly recovered by more than 10 dB. The ECoG in ALHL was 0.334 ± 0.11 (higher than 0.25 ± 0.08 on the normal side) and ECoG abnormality was 35.5% (the greater low-tone hearing loss, the higher ECoG value).

The current study employed behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures to investigate brain plasticity associated with second-language (L2) phonetic learning based on an adaptive computer training program. The program utilized the acoustic characteristics of Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) to train monolingual American English-speaking listeners to perceive Mandarin lexical tones. Behavioral identification and discrimination tasks were conducted using naturally recorded speech, carefully controlled synthetic speech, and non-speech control stimuli. The ERP experiments were conducted with selected synthetic speech stimuli in a passive listening oddball paradigm. Identical pre- and post- tests were administered on nine adult listeners, who completed two-to-three hours of perceptual training. The perceptual training sessions used pair-wise lexical tone identification, and progressed through seven levels of difficulty for each tone pair. The levels of difficulty included progression in speaker variability from one to four speakers and progression through four levels of acoustic exaggeration of duration, pitch range, and pitch contour. Behavioral results for the natural speech stimuli revealed significant training-induced improvement in identification of Tones 1, 3, and 4. Improvements in identification of Tone 4 generalized to novel stimuli as well. Additionally, comparison between discrimination of across-category and within-category stimulus pairs taken from a synthetic continuum revealed a training-induced shift toward more native-like categorical perception of the Mandarin lexical tones. Analysis of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses in the ERP data revealed increased amplitude and decreased latency for pre-attentive processing of across-category discrimination as a result of training. There were also laterality changes in the MMN responses to the non-speech control stimuli, which could reflect reallocation of brain resources in processing pitch patterns

Early language acquisition is potentially complicated by the presence of many sources of variability in the speech signal. A frequent example of variability is phonological alternations, which can lead to context-driven changes in the realization of a word. The aim of the current study was to investigate effects of a highly frequent yet scarcely researched type of suprasegmental phonological alternation - tone Sandhi - on early spoken word recognition. The tone Sandhi rule investigated herein involves a tone change of the first syllable in a disyllabic unit. In accordance with third tone Sandhi, when two dipping tone syllables are juxtaposed in connected speech, the first syllable is dissimilated to a high rising tone. For example, 'flour mill' (unaltered pre-Sandhi form [(214) (214)]) undergoes tonal alternation resulting in the altered post-Sandhi form [(35) (214)]. In the current study, preschoolers' sensitivity to the effects of tone Sandhi when processing familiar words was investigated via a preferential looking paradigm. Words varied in their phonological form: one set of words was labeled with a phonological alternation due to Sandhi (Post Sandhi), one set of words was labeled with an unaltered Sandhi form (Pre Sandhi), one set consisted of non Sandhi words (Correct Pronunciation, and one set were labeled with a tonal alternation not associated with Sandhi rules (Mispronunciation). Post-Sandhi forms and correct pronunciations were associated with visual referents with comparable strength, with only a subtle processing cost observed for post-Sandhi forms in the time course of lexical selection. Likewise, pre-Sandhi forms and true mispronunciations were rejected as labels for visual references with comparable strength, with only subtle differences observed in the time course of lexical selection. Findings are discussed in terms of their impact on prevailing theories of lexical representation.

Abundant research conducted in Western contexts has shown that biological risk factors such as low resting heart rate (HR) might be related to childhood aggression. However, it was unclear (1) how resting HR, as well as other markers of cardiac functions such as resting vagal tone, may be related to subtypes of aggression such as reactive and proactive aggression, and (2) whether the HR-aggression relation can be replicated in non-Western contexts. Therefore, this study examined the concurrent and prospective relations between resting HR, vagal tone, and Chinese children's reactive and proactive aggression. Participants were 183 children (M age=7.64 years, 91 girls) recruited from an elementary school in Zhenjiang, PRC. Children's resting HR and vagal tone were assessed in the second grade (T1). Teachers rated children's reactive and proactive aggression in the second (T1) and fourth grade (T2). Results showed that lower resting HR at T1 was associated with higher reactive and proactive aggression at T1 and T2, and higher vagal tone was associated with lower HR, which in turn was related to higher reactive and proactive aggression at T1 and T2. Lower vagal tone was directly related to higher reactive but not proactive aggression at T1 and T2, whereas lower HR was related to higher reactive aggression at T2 for children with low or moderate vagal tone but was not for children with high vagal tone. These psychophysiological findings from a non-Western context add additional support for both similarities and differences between reactive and proactive aggression in childhood.

It has been previously shown that the probiotic kefir (a symbiotic matrix containing acid bacteria and yeasts) attenuated the hypertension and the endothelial dysfunction in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). In the present study, the effect of chronic administration of kefir on the cardiac autonomic control of heart rate (HR) and baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) in SHR was evaluated. SHR were treated with kefir (0.3 mL/100 g body weight) for 60 days and compared with non-treated SHR and with normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats. Cardiac autonomic vagal (VT) and sympathetic (ST) tones were estimated through the blockade of the cardiac muscarinic receptors (methylatropine) and the blockade of β1-adrenoceptor (atenolol). The BRS was evaluated by the tachycardia and bradycardia responses to vasoactive drug-induced decreases and increases in arterial blood pressure (BP), respectively. Additionally, spontaneous BRS was estimated by autoregressive spectral analysis. Kefir-treated SHR exhibited significant attenuation of basal BP, HR, and cardiac hypertrophy compared to non-treated SHR (12, 13, and 21%, respectively). Cardiac VT and ST were significantly altered in the SHR (~40 and ~90 bpm) compared with Wistar rats (~120 and ~30 bpm) and were partially recovered in SHR-kefir (~90 and ~25 bpm). SHR exhibited an impaired bradycardic BRS (~50%) compared with Wistar rats, which was reduced to ~40% in the kefir-treated SHR and abolished by methylatropine in all groups. SHR also exhibited a significant impairment of the tachycardic BRS (~23%) compared with Wistar rats and this difference was reduced to 8% in the SHR-kefir. Under the action of atenolol the residual reflex tachycardia was smaller in SHR than in Wistar rats and kefir attenuated this abnormality. Spectral analysis revealed increased low frequency components of BP (~3.5-fold) and pulse interval (~2-fold) compared with Wistar rats and these differences were reduced by kefir-treatment to ~1.6- and ~1.5-fold, respectively

Full Text Available Mohamed D Keita,1 Valerie J Diaz,1,2 Audrey P Miller,1 Maria Olenick,1 Sharon R Simon1 1Department of Undergraduate Nursing, Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, 2Operational Health Support Unit Jacksonville, United States Navy Nurse Corps, Jacksonville, FL, USA Abstract: The nursing shortage in the USA is expected to reach 260,000 registered nurses (RNs by 2025. The most profound shortages are expected in California and Florida, translating into 109,779 and 128,364 RN jobs, respectively. Despite a foreseen growth in nursing career opportunities nationwide, the supply of nurses will be insufficient to meet the corresponding demand. Capitalizing on prior education, experience, and skills of military clinical personnel to fill these jobs could significantly reduce the projected nursing shortage. Florida International University's Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences is circumventing barriers to recruit, retain, and graduate transitioning veteran medics and corpsmen as Bachelor of Science in Nursing prepared RNs who reintegrate into the civilian workforce. The Veteran Bachelor of Science in Nursing (VBSN program is in the form of a cooperative agreement between Florida International University and the US Health Resources and Services Administration. The VBSN program's main objective is to build upon the unique leadership skills, clinical education, and training of military medics and corpsmen to ensure successful completion of the Bachelor of Science in Nursing curriculum. VBSN students, as veterans themselves, have unique knowledge and exposure to the specific health issues and needs of the veteran population overall. They are poised and best prepared to effectively care for the US population, particularly the current 22 million US veterans and 1.6 million Florida veterans. Additionally, the VBSN program will alleviate the challenges, such as the lack of recognition of

To measure the pulse at the wrist, place the index and middle finger over the underside of the opposite wrist, below the base ... firmly with flat fingers until you feel the pulse in the radial artery.

@@ Theoretical analysis and experimental measurement of pulse-width jitter of diode laser pulses are presented. The expression of pulse power spectra with all amplitude jitter, timing jitter and pulse-width jitter is deduced.

Binaural hearing involves using information relating to the differences between the signals that arrive at the two ears, and it can make it easier to detect and recognize signals in a noisy environment. This phenomenon of binaural hearing is quantified in laboratory studies as the binaural masking-level difference (BMLD). Mandarin is one of the most commonly used languages, but there are no publication values of BMLD or BILD based on Mandarin tones. Therefore, this study investigated the BMLD and BILD of Mandarin tones. The BMLDs of Mandarin tone detection were measured based on the detection threshold differences for the four tones of the voiced vowels /i/ (i.e., /i1/, /i2/, /i3/, and /i4/) and /u/ (i.e., /u1/, /u2/, /u3/, and /u4/) in the presence of speech-spectrum noise when presented interaurally in phase (S0N0) and interaurally in antiphase (SπN0). The BILDs of Mandarin tone recognition in speech-spectrum noise were determined as the differences in the target-to-masker ratio (TMR) required for 50% correct tone recognitions between the S0N0 and SπN0 conditions. The detection thresholds for the four tones of /i/ and /u/ differed significantly (pMandarin tones were all lower in the SπN0 condition than in the S0N0 condition, and the BMLDs ranged from 7.3 to 11.5 dB. The TMR for 50% correct Mandarin tone recognitions differed significantly (pMandarin tone detection and recognition in the presence of speech-spectrum noise are improved when phase inversion is applied to the target speech. The average BILDs of Mandarin tones are smaller than the average BMLDs of Mandarin tones.

Full Text Available People׳s visual perception and recognition of urban colorscape tones change significantly in hazy weather. A psychological experiment is conducted in this study to investigate visual comfort related to commercial and residential buildings. Visual observations are performed on the tones of an urban colorscape during hazy weather and air pollution in Harbin, China. Fifty-eight color samples selected through an orthogonal method are evaluated through a Likert scale by 30 subjects in a laboratory setting. Statistical analysis is performed with the maximal information coefficient and R language. Experimental results show that the changing threshold values of color tones are related to the visual comfort levels of the subjects. The influence of the three factors of color tones on visual comfort level is relatively independent, and the effects of value and chroma contrast on color comfort level are greater than that of hue contrast in hazy weather. Furthermore, the comfort recognition threshold values of color tones in hazy weather are determined through data comparisons and analyses.

This paper reports the development of a quantitative target approximation (qTA) model for generating F(0) contours of speech. The qTA model simulates the production of tone and intonation as a process of syllable-synchronized sequential target approximation [Xu, Y. (2005). "Speech melody as articulatorily implemented communicative functions," Speech Commun. 46, 220-251]. It adopts a set of biomechanical and linguistic assumptions about the mechanisms of speech production. The communicative functions directly modeled are lexical tone in Mandarin and lexical stress in English and focus in both languages. The qTA model is evaluated by extracting function-specific model parameters from natural speech via supervised learning (automatic analysis by synthesis) and comparing the F(0) contours generated with the extracted parameters to those of natural utterances through numerical evaluation and perceptual testing. The F(0) contours generated by the qTA model with the learned parameters were very close to the natural contours in terms of root mean square error, rate of human identification of tone, and focus and judgment of naturalness by human listeners. The results demonstrate that the qTA model is both an effective tool for research on tone and intonation and a potentially effective system for automatic synthesis of tone and intonation.

Vagal tone is a measure of cardiovascular function that facilitates adaptive responses to environmental challenge. Low vagal tone is associated with poor emotional and attentional regulation in children and has been conceptualized as a marker of sensitivity to stress. We investigated whether the associations of a wide range of psychosocial stressors with internalizing and externalizing psychopathology were magnified in adolescents with low vagal tone. Resting heart period data were collected from a diverse community sample of adolescents (ages 13–17; N =168). Adolescents completed measures assessing internalizing and externalizing psychopathology and exposure to stressors occurring in family, peer, and community contexts. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was calculated from the interbeat interval time series. We estimated interactions between RSA and stress exposure in predicting internalizing and externalizing symptoms and evaluated whether interactions differed by gender. Exposure to psychosocial stressors was associated strongly with psychopathology. RSA was unrelated to internalizing or externalizing problems. Significant interactions were observed between RSA and child abuse, community violence, peer victimization, and traumatic events in predicting internalizing but not externalizing symptoms. Stressors were positively associated with internalizing symptoms in adolescents with low RSA but not in those with high RSA. Similar patterns were observed for anxiety and depression. These interactions were more consistently observed for male than female individuals. Low vagal tone is associated with internalizing psychopathology in adolescents exposed to high levels of stressors. Measurement of vagal tone in clinical settings might provide useful information about sensitivity to stress in child and adolescent clients. PMID:24156380

Full Text Available Clinical assessment of orofacial muscle tone is of interest for differential diagnosis of the dysarthrias, but standardized procedures and normative data are lacking. In this study, perceptual ratings of tone were compared with instrumental measures of tissue stiffness for facial, lingual, and masticatory muscles in 70 individuals with dysarthria. Perceptual and instrumental tone data were discordant and failed to discriminate between five dysarthria types. These results raised concerns about the validity of Myoton-3 stiffness measures in the orofacial muscles. Therefore, a second study evaluated contracted and relaxed orofacial muscles in 10 neurotypical adults. Results for the cheek, masseter, and lateral tongue surface followed predictions, with significantly higher tissue stiffness during contraction. In contradiction, stiffness measures from the superior surface of the tongue were lower during contraction. Superior-to-inferior tongue thickness was notably increased during contraction. A third study revealed that tissue thickness up to ~10 mm significantly affected Myoton-3 measures. Altered tissue thickness due to neuromuscular conditions like spasticity and atrophy may have undermined the detection of group differences in the original sample of dysarthric speakers. These experiments underscore the challenges of assessing orofacial muscle tone and identify considerations for quantification of tone-related differences across dysarthria groups in future studies.

A novel, cost effective pulse height digitization scheme for spectroscopy applications, utilizing a CMOS analog switch as reset element in the feedback of preamplifier stage is designed. The CMOS switch resistance is controlled by a signal generated from a firmware, run in parallel with a digitizer. While the very high open-state resistance of the switch reduces the thermal noise in the preamplifier output, eliminating the need for pulse shaping, it increases the probability of pulse pile-up. A state machine run in conjunction with the firmware eliminates the pile-up event error contribution by prompting the firmware to prevent the piled-up pulse levels from getting registered. The Pulse height digitization and pile up elimination functions are implemented on a single-chip Programmable System on Chip (PSoC) mixed signal platform from Cypress Semiconductor. The digitized pulse heights are communicated to a PC based virtual instrument graphical user interface developed using National Instruments Lab VIEW. The new scheme is functionally verified with Planar PIN diode detectors in obtaining alpha particle spectra.

Exploring autonomic nervous system (ANS) changes during hypnosis is critical for understanding the nature and extent of the hypnotic phenomenon and for identifying the mechanisms underlying the effects of hypnosis in different medical conditions. To assess ANS changes during hypnosis, electrodermal activity and pulse rate variability (PRV) were measured in 121 young adults. Participants either received hypnotic induction (hypnosis condition) or listened to music (control condition), and both groups were exposed to test suggestions. Blocks of silence and experimental sound stimuli were presented at baseline, after induction, and after de-induction. Skin conductance level (SCL) and high frequency (HF) power of PRV measured at each phase were compared between groups. Hypnosis decreased SCL compared to the control condition; however, there were no group differences in HF power. Furthermore, hypnotic suggestibility did not moderate ANS changes in the hypnosis group. These findings indicate that hypnosis reduces tonic sympathetic nervous system activity, which might explain why hypnosis is effective in the treatment of disorders with strong sympathetic nervous system involvement, such as rheumatoid arthritis, hot flashes, hypertension, and chronic pain. Further studies with different control conditions are required to examine the specificity of the sympathetic effects of hypnosis.

开县话有阴平、阳平、上声、去声四个声调，没有入声，中古入声字今基本读阳平，极少数读去声、阴平，个别读上声。开县话没有入声韵，中古入声字今全读舒声韵。与普通话相比较，中古入声字在今开县话韵母中的分布自有其特点。%There are four tones in Kaixian County dialect: high level tone, rising tone, the falling-rising tone and falling tone, without entering tone. The medieval entering tones are read with rising tone, a little with falling tone and level tone and rising tones individually. Entering tone character is not included in Kaixian County dialect phonology, the level tone rhyme being read in the medieval entering tone characters. Compared with standard Chinese pronunciation, medieval entering tone characters has its particular characteristics in Kaixian County dialect distribution.

BACKGROUND: Screening for hearing loss in English children at entry to school (age 5-6 years) is usually by pure tone audiometry sweep undertaken by school nurses. This study aimed to compare the validity and screening rates of pure tone audiometry with impedance screening in these children. METHODS: Two stage pure tone audiometry and impedance methods of screening were compared in 610 school entry children from 19 infant schools in north east England. Both procedures were completed by school...

Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in a Mandarin context vs. an English context. Across three eye-tracked word-learning experiments, results indicated that tone-intonation bilinguals process tone in accordance with the language context. In Experiment 1, 51 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 26 English speakers without tone experience were taught Mandarin-compatible novel words with tones. Mandarin-English bilinguals out-performed English speakers, and, for bilinguals, overall accuracy was correlated with Mandarin dominance. Experiment 2 taught 24 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 25 English speakers novel words with Mandarin-like tones, but English-like phonemes and phonotactics. The Mandarin-dominance advantages observed in Experiment 1 disappeared when words were English-like. Experiment 3 contrasted Mandarin-like vs. English-like words in a within-subjects design, providing even stronger evidence that bilinguals can process tone language-specifically. Bilinguals (N = 58), regardless of language dominance, attended more to tone than English speakers without Mandarin experience (N = 28), but only when words were Mandarin-like—not when they were English-like. Mandarin-English bilinguals thus tailor tone processing to the within-word language context. PMID:28076400

Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in a Mandarin context vs. an English context. Across three eye-tracked word-learning experiments, results indicated that tone-intonation bilinguals process tone in accordance with the language context. In Experiment 1, 51 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 26 English speakers without tone experience were taught Mandarin-compatible novel words with tones. Mandarin-English bilinguals out-performed English speakers, and, for bilinguals, overall accuracy was correlated with Mandarin dominance. Experiment 2 taught 24 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 25 English speakers novel words with Mandarin-like tones, but English-like phonemes and phonotactics. The Mandarin-dominance advantages observed in Experiment 1 disappeared when words were English-like. Experiment 3 contrasted Mandarin-like vs. English-like words in a within-subjects design, providing even stronger evidence that bilinguals can process tone language-specifically. Bilinguals (N = 58), regardless of language dominance, attended more to tone than English speakers without Mandarin experience (N = 28), but only when words were Mandarin-like-not when they were English-like. Mandarin-English bilinguals thus tailor tone processing to the within-word language context.

Harmonically rich sounds have been shown to be processed more efficiently by the human brain compared to single sinusoidal tones. To control for stimulus complexity as a potentially confounding factor, tones and equally complex spectrally rotated sounds, have been used in the present study to investigate the role of the overtone series in sensory auditory processing in non-musicians. Timbre differences in instrumental tones with equal pitch elicited a MMN which was earlier compared to that elicited by the spectrally rotated sounds, indicating that harmonically rich tones are processed faster compared to non-musical sounds without an overtone series, even when pitch is not the relevant information.

The present study investigated to what extent ones' L1 prosodic backgrounds affect their learning of a new tonal system. The question as to whether native speakers of a tone language perform differently from those of a pitch accent language will be addressed. Twenty native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese (a tone language) and Japanese (a pitch accent language) were assigned to two groups. All of them had had no prior knowledge of Mandarin, and had never received any form of musical training before they participated in the study. Their performance of the identification of Mandarin tones before and after a short-term training was compared. Analysis of listeners' tonal confusions in the pretest, posttest, and generalization tests revealed that both Cantonese and Japanese listeners had more confusion for two contrastive tone pairs: Tone 1-Tone 4, and Tone 2-Tone 3. Moreover, Cantonese speakers consistently had greater difficulty than Japanese speakers in distinguishing the tones in each pair. These imply that listeners L1 prosodic backgrounds are at work during the process of learning a new tonal system. The findings will be further discussed in terms of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best, 1995). [Work supported by SSHRC.

A spectrally efficient tone-aided dual vestigial sideband (TA/DVSB) system for digital data communications on fading channels is presented and described analytically. This PSK (phase-shift-keying) system incorporates a feed-forward, tone-aided demodulation technique to compensate for Doppler frequency shift and channel- induced, multipath fading. In contrast to other tone-in-band-type systems, receiver synchronization is derived from the complete data VSBs. Simulation results for the Rician fading channel are presented. These results demonstrate the receiver's ability to mitigate performance degradation due to fading and to obtain proper data carrier synchronization, suggesting that the proposed TA/DVSB system has promise for this application. Simulated BER (bit-error rate) data indicate that the TA/DVSB system effectively alleviates the channel distortions of the land mobile satellite application.

A discriminative framework of tone model integration in continuous speech recognition was proposed. The method uses model dependent weights to scale probabilities of the hidden Markov models based on spectral features and tone models based on tonal features.The weights are discriminatively trahined by minimum phone error criterion. Update equation of the model weights based on extended Baum-Welch algorithm is derived. Various schemes of model weight combination are evaluated and a smoothing technique is introduced to make training robust to over fitting. The proposed method is ewluated on tonal syllable output and character output speech recognition tasks. The experimental results show the proposed method has obtained 9.5% and 4.7% relative error reduction than global weight on the two tasks due to a better interpolation of the given models. This proves the effectiveness of discriminative trained model weights for tone model integration.

High dynamic range imaging techniques involve capturing and storing real world radiance values that span many orders of magnitude. However, common display devices can usually reproduce intensity ranges only up to two to three orders of magnitude. Therefore, in order to display a high dynamic range image on a low dynamic range screen, the dynamic range of the image needs to be compressed without losing details or introducing artefacts, and this process is called tone mapping. A good tone mapping operator must be able to produce a low dynamic range image that matches as much as possible the perception of the real world scene. We propose a two stage tone mapping approach, in which the first stage is a global method for range compression based on a gamma curve that equalizes the lightness histogram the best, and the second stage performs local contrast enhancement and color induction using neural activity models for the visual cortex.

Full Text Available This study investigates the impact of L1 (Vietnamese on L2 (English with a specific reference to rhythm. The transfer of L1 rhythm to the L2 rhythm is considered as a potential factor in reducing EFL learner’s intelligibility. The findings of this quantitative research show that Vietnamese adult EFL learners’ oral output is significantly unintelligible due to the application the mid-level tone of their first language, part of Vietnamese rhythm to produce English rhythm in a pronunciation test, making their utterance monotonous. This paper aims at presenting findings gained from an examination into how the Vietnamese rhythm, the mid-level tone, affects 50 Vietnamese adult EFL learners’ intelligibility in a pronunciation test assessed by ten judges. Key words: rhythm, mid-level tone, Vietnamese adult EFL learners, and intelligibility

@@ In experiment,the generation of 14-tone stable carriers with recirculating frequency shifter is realized.Some factors that impact the performance of the carrier generation are discussed.It is experimentally found that the balance and the insertion loss of the inphase/quadrature (l/Q,) modulator,the accurate π /2 phase difference and equal power level of two rf signals which are applied to the two ports of the I/Q modulator,the gain of the optical amplifier,the bandwidth and sharp window spectrum of the tunable filter and the stability of the optical signals' states of polarization fed into I/Q modulator,play important roles in the generation of a stable multi-tone carrier source.By employing appropriate techniques we obtain 14-tone stable carriers in the experiment.

This paper reveals mechanisms of two-tone suppression (2TS) and distortion product (DP) on the basilar membrane (BM) using a model. Computational simulation is conducted with an active and nonlinear transmission line model including a nonlinear outer hair cell model that shows compressive property in two dimensionally where two tones are input. To evaluate the cochlear model, over all responses of BM model are used. For simultaneous input pairs, the response is suppressed by a stronger tone, or distorted where levels of a pair are equaled. Cubic distortion produced by a simple nonlinear feedback system including the OHC model appears similar to DPs in the cochlear model. These results suggest that two dimensional property of the OHC and its feedback generate 2TS and DPs. This further suggests the importance of the overall responses for investigating mechanisms of cochlear nonlinearities without fluid coupling in the cochlea.

It is intended in this paper to discuss the common patterns of American intonation that interfere the tone acquisition by American students. Similar to the linguistic phenomenon that nonnative speakers of English speak the language with foreign accent due to the influence and linguistic constraints of their own mother tongue, American students face interference from the intonation patterns of American English in their acquisition of tones in the study of Mandarin Chinese. The syntactic structure that most clearly reflects this fact is the two-syllable Chinese word groups. After a close study of the most common mistakes made by American students in .their study of Mandarin tones, some general patterns are observed. It is concluded that the major causes of these mistakes could be attributed to English intonation pattems on the same level of syntactic structure

This 1-year longitudinal study examined the role of Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity in predicting English reading comprehension and the pathways underlying their relation. Multiple measures of Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity, English lexical stress sensitivity, Cantonese segmental phonological awareness, general auditory sensitivity, English word reading, and English reading comprehension were administered to 133 Cantonese-English unbalanced bilingual second graders. Structural equation modeling analysis identified transfer of Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity to English reading comprehension. This transfer was realized through a direct pathway via English stress sensitivity and also an indirect pathway via English word reading. These results suggest that prosodic sensitivity is an important factor influencing English reading comprehension and that it needs to be incorporated into theoretical accounts of reading comprehension across languages.

Young children learn multiple cognitive skills concurrently (e.g., language and music). Evidence is limited as to whether and how learning in one domain affects that in another during early development. Here we assessed whether exposure to a tone language benefits musical pitch processing among 3-5-year-old children. More specifically, we compared the pitch perception of Chinese children who spoke a tone language (i.e., Mandarin) with English-speaking American children. We found that Mandarin-speaking children were more advanced at pitch processing than English-speaking children but both groups performed similarly on a control music task (timbre discrimination). The findings support the Pitch Generalization Hypothesis that tone languages drive attention to pitch in nonlinguistic contexts, and suggest that language learning benefits aspects of music perception in early development. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/UY0kpGpPNA0.

We propose power constrained contrast enhancement based on brightness compensated contrast-tone mapping operation (BCCTMO). We adopt brightness compensation to restore the original perceptual luminance and combine tone mapping with contrast enhancement to improve image quality. First, we increase pixel values to compensate for the reduced brightness caused by backlight dimming while maintaining the perceived luminance. Then we perform a contrast-tone mapping operation to reduce the information loss caused by the brightness compensation and enhance contrast in images. Finally, we conduct color scaling to reproduce natural colors. We implement BCCTMO on an Android tablet with an LCD display using mathematical approximation. Experimental results demonstrate that BCCTMO produces high-quality images while minimizing distortions and saving power compared with state-of-the-art methods.

A spectrally efficient tone-aided dual vestigial sideband (TA/DVSB) system for digital data communications on fading channels is presented and described analytically. This PSK (phase-shift-keying) system incorporates a feed-forward, tone-aided demodulation technique to compensate for Doppler frequency shift and channel- induced, multipath fading. In contrast to other tone-in-band-type systems, receiver synchronization is derived from the complete data VSBs. Simulation results for the Rician fading channel are presented. These results demonstrate the receiver's ability to mitigate performance degradation due to fading and to obtain proper data carrier synchronization, suggesting that the proposed TA/DVSB system has promise for this application. Simulated BER (bit-error rate) data indicate that the TA/DVSB system effectively alleviates the channel distortions of the land mobile satellite application.

Full Text Available Overhead of data transmission over internet is increasing exponentially every day. Optimization of natural bandwidth is the basic motive by compressing image data to the maximum extend. For the same objective, combination of lossy half tone and lossless Wavelet Transform techniques is proposed so as to obtain low-bit rate video data transmission. Decimal values of bitmapped image are to be converted into either 1 or 0 in half toning process that incur pictorial loss and gives 8:1 compression ratio (CR irrespective of image. Wavelet Transform is applied on half tone image for higher compression for various levels. An experimental result shows the higher CR, minimum Mean Square Error (MSE. Ten sample images of different people captured by Nikon camera are used for experimentation.All images are bitmap (.BMP 512 X 512 in size. The proposed technique can be used for video conferencing, storage of movies and CCTV footage etc.

The need to capture male mosquitoes has intensified recently as a result of a number of male-based sterile insect technique (SIT) and population-modification programs focused on Aedes aegypti (L.) having initiated field releases. Here, we report the results of the successful exploitation of the attraction of male Ae. aegypti to female flight tones to enhance male collections in nonmechanical passive (nonbattery powered) Gravid Aedes Traps (GAT). Prior to field studies, male attraction to female flight tones of 484 and 560 Hz, as well as to a male flight tone of 715 Hz, were assessed in a series of controlled release-recapture and semifield trials. These trials determined that a pure tone of 484 Hz was significantly more attractive to free-flying males than the other flight tones and enabled their collection in sound-baited GATs (ca. 95% capture rate after 2 h; 484 Hz at 65 dB). In contrast, gravid females were unresponsive to male or female flight tones and were evenly distributed among sound-baited and control GATs. Importantly, under normal field conditions sound-baited GATs (484 Hz at 70 dB) captured significantly more male Ae. aegypti per 24-h trap interval (1.3 ± 0.37) than controls (0.2 ± 0.13). Overall, sound-bated GATs captured approximately twice as many Ae. aegypti (male and female; 3.0 ± 0.68 per interval, 30 total) than controls (1.5 ± 0.56 per interval, 15 total). These results reveal that sound-baited GATs are a simple and effective surveillance tool for Ae. aegypti that would allow current male-based SIT and population-modification programs to effectively monitor males in their target populations.

The relative importance of ATP as a functional sympathetic neurotransmitter in blood vessels has been shown to be increased when the level of preexisting vascular tone or pressure is increased, in studies carried out in rat mesenteric arteries. The aim of the present study was to determine whether tone influences the involvement of ATP as a sympathetic cotransmitter with noradrenaline in another species. We used the porcine perfused mesenteric arterial bed and porcine mesenteric large, medium and small arteries mounted for isometric tension recording, because purinergic cotransmission can vary depending on the size of the blood vessel. In the perfused mesenteric bed at basal tone, sympathetic neurogenic vasocontractile responses were abolished by prazosin, an α1-adrenoceptor antagonist, but there was no significant effect of α,β-methylene ATP, a P2X receptor-desensitizing agent. Submaximal precontraction of the mesenteric arterial bed with U46619, a thromboxane A2 mimetic, augmented the sympathetic neurogenic vasocontractile responses; under these conditions, both α,β-methylene ATP and prazosin attenuated the neurogenic responses. In the mesenteric large, medium and small arteries, prazosin attenuated the sympathetic neurogenic contractile responses under conditions of both basal and U46619-raised tone. α,β-Methylene ATP was effective in all of these arteries only under conditions of U46619-induced tone, causing a similar inhibition in all arteries, but had no significant effect on sympathetic neurogenic contractions at basal tone. These data show that ATP is a cotransmitter with noradrenaline in porcine mesenteric arteries; the purinergic component was revealed under conditions of partial precontraction, which is more relevant to physiological conditions.

Full Text Available Cholinergic neuromodulation plays key roles in the regulation of neuronal excitability, network activity, arousal, and behavior. On longer time scales, cholinergic systems play essential roles in cortical development, maturation, and plasticity. Presumably, these processes are associated with substantial synaptic remodeling, yet to date, long-term relationships between cholinergic tone and synaptic remodeling remain largely unknown. Here we used automated microscopy combined with multielectrode array recordings to study long-term relationships between cholinergic tone, excitatory synapse remodeling, and network activity characteristics in networks of cortical neurons grown on multielectrode array substrates. Experimental elevations of cholinergic tone led to the abrupt suppression of episodic synchronous bursting activity (but not of general activity, followed by a gradual growth of excitatory synapses over hours. Subsequent blockage of cholinergic receptors led to an immediate restoration of synchronous bursting and the gradual reversal of synaptic growth. Neither synaptic growth nor downsizing was governed by multiplicative scaling rules. Instead, these occurred in a subset of synapses, irrespective of initial synaptic size. Synaptic growth seemed to depend on intrinsic network activity, but not on the degree to which bursting was suppressed. Intriguingly, sustained elevations of cholinergic tone were associated with a gradual recovery of synchronous bursting but not with a reversal of synaptic growth. These findings show that cholinergic tone can strongly affect synaptic remodeling and synchronous bursting activity, but do not support a strict coupling between the two. Finally, the reemergence of synchronous bursting in the presence of elevated cholinergic tone indicates that the capacity of cholinergic neuromodulation to indefinitely suppress synchronous bursting might be inherently limited.

Register allocation is an important part of optimizing compiler. The algorithm of register allocation via graph coloring is implemented by Chaitin and his colleagues firstly and improved by Briggs and others. By abstracting register allocation to graph coloring, the allocation process is simplified. As the physical register number is limited, coloring of the interference graph can"t succeed for every node. The uncolored nodes must be spilled. There is an assumption that almost all the allocation method obeys: when a register is allocated to a variable v, it can"t be used by others before v quit even if v is not used for a long time. This may causes a waste of register resource. The authors relax this restriction under certain conditions and make some improvement. In this method, one register can be mapped to two or more interfered "living" live ranges at the same time if they satisfy some requirements. An operation named merge is defined which can arrange two interfered nodes occupy the same register with some cost. Thus, the resource of register can be used more effectively and the cost of memory access can be reduced greatly.

The National Immunisation Program Schedule in Australia is formulated and funded nationally under the population-wide Medicare system. The policy is implemented by the eight state and territory jurisdictions. The national immunisation registers consist of the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register (ACIR), and, more recently, the National Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination Program Register. Moreover, a variety of jurisdiction-based registers and primary care practice software systems exist, which interact with the national registers. General practitioners can obtain reports listing patients under seven years attending their practice and recorded as 'not fully immunised', and immunisation coverage rates for their practice linked to government incentives through Medicare. A 2011 report documents national coverage of 91.8% fully immunised at 12 months, and 92.6% at 24 months. The HPV register provides information on vaccination coverage with the potential to link with a register of cervical cancer screening results. Limitations of current national register include inability to easily access immunisation histories beyond seven years of age, and issues of underreporting and timeliness, which impact significantly the immunisation coverage estimates. The linkage of these registers with healthcare outcome data will further enhance public health outcomes by enabling rapid, population-level vaccine safety and effectiveness investigations in a nation with a track record as an 'early adopter' of new childhood vaccines.

Generally, time-delay systems are regarded as multi-attractor systems. We investigate mode selection rules for two-delay systems considering which oscillation mode is first excited by the Hopf bifurcation with increasing a bifurcation parameter. In particular, we focus on the case that the strength of the short time delay α1 is lower than that of the long time delay α2. In a certain range of α1/α2 in which it is sufficiently small but still not negligible, the third-harmonic mode occupies a particular range of the ratio of the two delay times such that 2 < tR2/tR1 < 4, where tR1 and tR2 denote the short and long delay times, respectively. This is the key for understanding the function of the register hole on the clarinet, which is smaller in radius than the other tone holes, but works well to raise the pitch of first register notes in a wide range more than an octave by a twelfth (19 semitones), i.e., generating third harmonics, when opened. This is confirmed using a simple model of the clarinet with two delays: short and long time delays are regarded as delayed reflections caused by the register hole and the open end of the pipe, respectively. The working range of the register hole roughly corresponds to the particular range of the third-harmonic mode for two-delay systems (2 < tR2/tR1 < 4).

The vagus nerve is a central component of cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathways. We sought to evaluate the effect of bilateral transcutaneous cervical vagal nerve stimulation (t-VNS) on validated parameters of autonomic tone and cytokines in 20 healthy subjects. 24 hours after t-VNS, there was an increase in cardiac vagal tone and a reduction in tumor necrosis factor-α in comparison to baseline. No change was seen in blood pressure, cardiac sympathetic index or other cytokines. These preliminary data suggest that t-VNS exerts an autonomic and a subtle antitumor necrosis factor-α effect, which warrants further evaluation in larger controlled studies.

San Felipe Jalapa de Díaz (Jalapa) Mazatec is unusual in possessing a three-way phonation contrast and three-way level tone contrast independent of phonation. This study investigates the acoustics of how phonation and tone interact in this language, and how such interactions are maintained across variables like speaker sex, vowel timecourse, and presence of aspiration in the onset. Using a large number of words from the recordings of Mazatec made by Paul Kirk and Peter Ladefoged in the 1980s ...

averages. This work aims to assess the individual variability in cochlear delay. Tone-burst evoked otoacoustic emissions (TBOAEs) are used in this study to estimate cochlear delay. The OAE is analysed by separating the non-linear components of cochlear origin, and the linear reflection in the time domain....... The observed latencies as a function of frequency are qualitatively similar across subjects. For the individual subjects, the delay for each tone-burst frequency is reproducible. Defining OAE latency as the time between the onset of the stimulus and the peak of the first OAE burst yields results in agreement...

In 1997, the European Communities Confederation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EC4) set up a Register for European Specialists in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. The operation of the Register is undertaken by a Register Commission (EC4RC). During the last 12 years, more...... than 2200 specialists in Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine have joined the Register. In 2007, EC4 merged with the Forum of European Societies of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (FESCC) to form the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFCC). Two previous...

Full Text Available To construct their first lexicon, infants must determine the relationship between native phonological variation and the meanings of words. This process is arguably more complex for bilingual learners who are often confronted with phonological conflict: phonological variation that is lexically relevant in one language may be lexically irrelevant in the other. In a series of four experiments, the present study investigated English-Mandarin bilingual infants’ abilities to negotiate phonological conflict introduced by learning both a tone and a non-tone language. In a novel word learning task, bilingual children were tested on their sensitivity to tone variation in English and Mandarin contexts. Their abilities to interpret tone variation in a language-dependent manner were compared to those of monolingual Mandarin learning infants. Results demonstrated that at 12 to 13 months, bilingual infants demonstrated the ability to bind tone to word meanings in Mandarin, but to disregard tone variation when learning new words in English. In contrast, monolingual learners of Mandarin did not show evidence of integrating tones into word meanings in Mandarin at the same age even though they were learning a tone language. However, a tone discrimination paradigm confirmed that monolingual Mandarin learning infants were able to tell these tones apart at 12 to 13 months under a different set of conditions. Later, at 17 to 18 months, monolingual Mandarin learners were able to bind tone variation to word meanings when learning new words. Our findings are discussed in terms of cognitive adaptations associated with bilingualism that may ease the negotiation of phonological conflict and facilitate precocious uptake of certain properties of each language.

Full Text Available This study investigated the similarities and differences in perception of Cantonese tones and English stress patterns by Cantonese-English bilingual children, adults, and English monolingual adults. All three groups were asked to discriminate pairs of syllables that minimally differed in either Cantonese tone or in English stress. Bilingual children's performance on tone perception was comparable to their performance on stress perception. By contrast, bilingual adults' performance on tone perception was lower than their performance on stress perception, and there was a similar pattern in English monolingual adults. Bilingual adults tended to perform better than English monolingual adults on both the tone and stress perception tests. A significant correlation between tone perception and stress perception performance was found in bilingual children but not in bilingual adults. All three groups showed lower accuracy in the high rising-low rising contrast than any of the other 14 Cantonese tone contrasts. The acoustic analyses revealed that average F0, F0 onset, and F0 major slope were the critical acoustic correlates of Cantonese tones, whereas multiple acoustic correlates were salient in English stress, including average F0, spectral balance, duration and intensity. We argue that participants' difficulty in perceiving high rising-low rising contrasts originated from the contrasts' similarities in F0 onset and average F0; indeed the difference between their major slopes was the only cue with which to distinguish them. Acoustic-perceptual correlation analyses showed that although the average F0 and F0 onset were associated with tone perception performance in all three groups, F0 major slope was only associated with tone perception in the bilingual adult group. These results support a dynamic interactive account of suprasegmental speech perception by emphasizing the positive prosodic transfer between Cantonese tone and English stress, and the role

This study investigated the similarities and differences in perception of Cantonese tones and English stress patterns by Cantonese-English bilingual children, adults, and English monolingual adults. All three groups were asked to discriminate pairs of syllables that minimally differed in either Cantonese tone or in English stress. Bilingual children's performance on tone perception was comparable to their performance on stress perception. By contrast, bilingual adults' performance on tone perception was lower than their performance on stress perception, and there was a similar pattern in English monolingual adults. Bilingual adults tended to perform better than English monolingual adults on both the tone and stress perception tests. A significant correlation between tone perception and stress perception performance was found in bilingual children but not in bilingual adults. All three groups showed lower accuracy in the high rising-low rising contrast than any of the other 14 Cantonese tone contrasts. The acoustic analyses revealed that average F0, F0 onset, and F0 major slope were the critical acoustic correlates of Cantonese tones, whereas multiple acoustic correlates were salient in English stress, including average F0, spectral balance, duration and intensity. We argue that participants' difficulty in perceiving high rising-low rising contrasts originated from the contrasts' similarities in F0 onset and average F0; indeed the difference between their major slopes was the only cue with which to distinguish them. Acoustic-perceptual correlation analyses showed that although the average F0 and F0 onset were associated with tone perception performance in all three groups, F0 major slope was only associated with tone perception in the bilingual adult group. These results support a dynamic interactive account of suprasegmental speech perception by emphasizing the positive prosodic transfer between Cantonese tone and English stress, and the role that level of

Optical Nyquist pulse generation based on a time lens with subsequent optical filtering is proposed. A nearly chirp-free 10-GHz 8.1-ps Nyquist pulse generator is experimentally demonstrated. By inserting group velocity dispersion (GVD) between cascaded phase and amplitude modulators, 11 tones ultraflat optical frequency comb (OFC) of 10-GHz frequency spacing within 0.9 dB power variation is obtained. The quasi-rectangular shape spectrum is then filtered out with a tunable rectangular-shaped optical band-pass filter (OBPF) and the quasi-linear chirp is compensated by a segment of standard single mode fiber (SSMF). By changing the wavelength of the continuous wave (CW) light, nearly chirp-free Nyquist pulses over C band are obtained. Furthermore, simultaneous dual-wavelength pulse generation is also demonstrated.

This study examined registered nurses' overall attitudes and homophobia towards gays and lesbians in the workplace. Homophobia scores, represented by the Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men (ATLG) Scale, was the dependent variable. Overall homophobia scores were assessed among a randomized stratified sample of registered nurses licensed in the…

In 1986 we began The Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) by recruiting young twins and multiples a few weeks or months after birth. Currently we register around 50% of all newborn multiples in The Netherlands. Their parents receive a questionnaire at registration and afterwards when the children are 2,

Speakers must command different linguistic registers to index various social-discourse elements, including the identity of the addressee. Previous work found that English-learning children could link registers to appropriate addressees by 5 years. Two experiments found that better cues to the linguistic form or to the social meaning of register…

INTRODUCTION: We evaluated the impact of including haemoglobin A(1c) (HbA(1c)) measurements in a regional algorithm for identification of diabetics by comparing the population identified by the regional algorithm with diabetics registered in the National Danish Diabetes Register (NDR) relative...

We have searched for precursors in light curves of short gamma-ray bursts registered by SPI-ACS/INTEGRAL in 2002-2014. The portion of short bursts with precursor activity will be less than 0.4% from all short bursts registered by SPI-ACS.

....301 Section 315.301 Administrative Personnel OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT CIVIL SERVICE REGULATIONS CAREER AND CAREER-CONDITIONAL EMPLOYMENT Career or Career-Conditional Employment From Registers § 315.301... appointed from a register for other than temporary or term employment becomes a career-conditional employee...

Despite the need to provide evidence-based health policy, most developing countries suffer from a lack of resources for sound epidemiologic evidence. Most twin registers have been established in developed countries and there are relatively fewer twin registers in developing countries. Considering the immense potential of twin research, it will be worthwhile to attempt to establish a new twin register in Mongolia, where biomedical studies are still scarce. Our objectives were to initiate the process of establishing a nation-wide twin register in Mongolia, based on a nation-wide, population-based database. With the approval and support of the Ministry of Population Development and Social Welfare of Mongolia, we were able to access an initial list of 411 twin pairs who live in the district of Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. By developing a questionnaire to estimate zygosity, we conducted a pilot survey. Those who registered consisted of 822 individuals or 411 twin pairs (same sex: male - 178; female - 157; different sex - 76), two sets of triplets (same sex: female - 2). The age of twins ranged from 1 to 81 (mean age 7.3 ± 11.3), and 52.4% were males. The first twin survey in Mongolia not only resulted in interim data for the Mongolian Twin Register, but has the potential for establishing a larger register by using the national database. It has been proven possible to establish a twin register for research purposes in Mongolia.

Full Text Available A methodology is proposed to design low leakage registers by considering the type of timing path, i.e., short or long, and type of register, i.e., launching or capturing. Three different dual threshold voltage registers are developed where each register trades, depending upon the timing path, a different timing constraint for reducing the leakage current. For example, the first proposed register is used as a launching register in a noncritical path, trading clock-to-Q delay for leakage current. Other timing constraints such as setup and hold times are maintained the same not to introduce any timing violations. Alternatively, the second and third registers, trade, respectively, setup time and hold time for leakage current while maintaining clock-to-Q delay constant. The effect of the proposed methodology on leakage current is investigated for four technology nodes. The overall reduction in the leakage current of a register can exceed 90% while maintaining the clock frequency and other design parameters such as area and dynamic power the same. Three ISCAS 89 benchmark circuits are utilized to evaluate the methodology, demonstrating, on average, 23% reduction in the overall leakage current.

... to be collected; (4) Minimize the burden of the collection of information on those who are to respond... Farm Service Agency Information Collection; Minority Farm Register AGENCY: Farm Service Agency, USDA... the extension of a currently approved information collection for the Minority Farm Register....

Speakers must command different linguistic registers to index various social-discourse elements, including the identity of the addressee. Previous work found that English-learning children could link registers to appropriate addressees by 5 years. Two experiments found that better cues to the linguistic form or to the social meaning of register…

This paper is an introduction to the PulseSoar concept. PulseSoar is a hypervelocity airplane that uses existing airport facilities and current technologies to fly at the very edge of space. It will be shown that PulseSoar can fly between any two points on the globe in less than two hours with fuel efficiency exceeding current state of the art commercial airliners. In addition, it will be shown that PulseSoar avoids environmental issues concerning the ozone layer and sonic booms because of its unique flight profile. All of this can be achieved with current technology. PulseSoar does not require the development of enabling technology. It is a concept which can be demonstrated today. The importance of this idea goes beyond the technical significance`s of PulseSoar in terms of feasibility and performance. PulseSoar could provide a crucial economic advantage to America`s largest export market: commercial aircraft. PulseSoar is a breakthrough concept for addressing the emerging markets of long range and high speed aircraft. Application of PulseSoar to commercial transport could provide the US Aerospace industry a substantial lead in offering high speed/long range aircraft to the world`s airlines. The rapid emergence of a US developed high speed aircraft could also be important to our competitiveness in the Pacific Rim and South American economies. A quick and inexpensive demonstration vehicle is proposed to bang the concept to reality within two years. This discussion will address all the major technical subjects encompassed by PulseSoar and identifies several near-term, and low risk, applications which may be further explored with the initial demonstration vehicle. What is PulseSoar? PulseSoar could enable high speed, high altitude and long range flight without many of the difficulties encountered by traditional hypersonic vehicles.

. We found significant differences between victims and non-victims according to socio-economic status, education, marital status, and ethnic origin, and also between victims by source of identification. CONCLUSIONS: We have identified a study population consisting of individual victims of violence......AIMS: The aim of this study was twofold. Firstly we identified victims of violence in national registers and discussed strengths and weaknesses of this approach. Secondly we assessed the magnitude of violence and the characteristics of the victims using register-based data. METHODS: We used three...... nationwide registers to identify victims of violence: The National Patient Register, the Victim Statistics, and the Causes of Death Register. We merged these data and assessed the degree of overlap between data sources. We identified a reference population by selecting all individuals in Denmark over 15...

Background:The validity of dementia diagnoses in the Danish nationwide hospital registers was evaluated to determine the value of these registers in epidemiological research about dementia. Methods: Two hundred patients were randomly selected from 4,682 patients registered for the first time...... with a dementia diagnosis in the last 6 months of 2003. The patients' medical journals were reviewed to evaluate if they fulfilled ICD-10 and/or DSM-IV criteria for dementia and specific dementia subtypes. The patients who were still alive in 2006 were invited to an interview. Results: One hundred and ninety......-seven journals were available for review and 51 patients were interviewed. A registered diagnosis of dementia was found to be correct in 169 (85.8%) cases. Regarding dementia subtypes, the degree of agreement between the registers and the results of the validating process was low with a kappa of 0.36 (95% CI 0...

ISS Bluetooth validation study, because it simultaneously transmits Magnetic Pulse which is integrated with existing exercise hardware on ISS. The simultaneous data streams allow for beat to beat comparison between the current ISS standard and CS2.Upon Bluetooth(Registered Trademark) validation aboard ISS, down select of a new BT_HRM for operational use will be made.